The Last Rose
by Yorick's Talking Skull
Summary: Beckett's old wounds are reopened. But this time, someone is there to mend them. 3X13 and what comes after...Complete.
1. The Things That Cannot Be

The Last Rose: Beckett's old wounds are reopened. But this time, someone is there to mend them. Spoiler pics 3X13.

**A/N: After seeing some of the spoiler pics, who could resist? It is like a sealed chocolate box. Highly tempting…**

**Something to hold you over until the 3x13 episode airs.**

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**_Chapter One: The Things That Cannot Be_

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Kate Beckett found him just where his mother said she would.

He was sitting in the old haunt; people watching. Something, according to Martha, Richard Castle did a lot of lately. Well, since he had been working with Kate on her mother's case that is. That and writing.

Words seemed to flow endlessly for him now. He told his mother it was because he had more to say about life and death than ever before. Castle's mother thought differently, of course. Sometimes, when she looked into her son's eyes, she found an emotion that he did not exhibit in the longest time. A void seemed to be filled within him.

She knew…he was in love.

But, of course, she would not tell Kate Beckett such a thing when she ended up phoning her late on a Sunday afternoon. Kate wanted to know where Castle was.

Her son and Kate had recently gone through the grueling task of closing her mother's case. Martha remembered catching glimpses of them in the loft to discuss certain leads. With a heavy heart, she watched as he would offer Beckett his hand and she would lace their fingers together slowly when they reached another dead end in the case.

The heavy heart also came from another source: their denial.

Richard Castle was fooling himself with any other woman than Kate Beckett, Martha knew. She had known this for a very long time. But yet, they sped forward into their futures; oblivious of their attraction. Or were they?

"_Martha,"_ she had said in the phone call. She could sense Kate Beckett was in a quiet place from her whisper. A place of silent mourning. She knew she was at her mother's grave. _"The roses and the tribute letters for my mother from your family and the precinct, I…I cannot tell you how much that means to me… to her."_

"_She is a beautiful soul. We all wish we would have known her,"_ Martha replied. _"But, I honestly cannot take any credit for that. This gesture was the creation of a person who wishes to remain anonymous."_

Kate paused on the other line.

"_Is Castle around?"_

"_Castle…"_ Martha felt a small smile come to her face. _"Well, he is at The Old Haunt. Writing, I would assume. He has been writing a lot lately, you know."_

"_So he has told me."_ And then there came another pause. _"Martha…do you think he'd mind, I mean, would it be okay to stop by The Old Haunt? I don't want to interrupt anything. I just…have something to say. Short. Brief and—"_

"_He'd be delighted to see you."_

Kate could almost see Martha smiling from where she sat by her mother's grave. _"Thank you, thank you so much."_

"_No problem, kiddo."_ Martha chimed.

They ended the call.

"_Mom,"_ Kate whispered, tucking her phone in her pocket. _"How do I approach him after he did something like this?"_

Her eyes, she tried to deny, burned with tears that were dangerously ready to dive from her eyes. Then, she let them fall.

Flowers.

They made them think of her no matter what type they were, planted in the ground or cut. She remembered with a heartbreaking clarity the tender look on her mother's face as she took her daughter's hands and they dug a hole in the blackened earth of their garden. _"You see, Kate,"_ she would say, putting a bulb within the soil, _"The bulb has to be planted in the ground to have life." _She would then take Kate's small hands and they would obscure the bulb in a mountain of earth.

Kate picked up her mother's flowers and letters and rearranged them on the grave. Maybe one day she would be able to open them and see what these remarkable people, life-saving individuals that came into her world, had to say about her mother. For now, she placed them neatly back on her mother's grave, roses and letters, and sat. She thought she would not open the letters…until curiosity got the best of her.

Silence pervaded around her as she opened Castle's letter to her mother.

_To Mrs. Joanna Beckett,_

_For somebody I have never had the pleasure to meet on this earth, your life, your story, and your legacy has impacted me in more ways than you can ever know. I was shocked to realize, within myself, that that my conception of love is completely wrong. The love that you held for the people in your life is something much more than any love I have ever known. It lasts beyond the grave. _

_Your memory breathes on. You live on because your love lives on. _

_It is one of those things that will never be destroyed. No hand of a murderer can ever take this away, it cannot be silenced through the taking of a life; hate will never win in the end. Love, I learned, is something that can and should last; forever. Through everything that fails, it is the one thing that shall always remain. When people die, walls crumble, memories fade and we die, I want my love to live on as well._

_How do I know your love lives on?_

_It's simple. I know your daughter…_

With trembling hands she closed the letter she was not supposed to read in the first place. She could not read the rest. Kate took the brown parcel string and wrapped it tighter and tighter around the letter; as if she could suffocate its words. They sliced at her heart.

"_Mom,"_ she whispered, clutching the letters. Her hands were now trembling violently. _"What do I do?"_

She presently stood before Castle in The Old Haunt. He looked up from his writing and caught her gaze right away. In a swift motion, he tucked his black notebook away.

They stood there, across the room from each other, eyes locked.

The rest of the room disappeared.

It was that same look he had in his eyes when he went to her apartment, and she caught him immersed in her, while they both poured through memories of her mother. Like then, it left her breathless.

With a wavering voice she called out to him, breaking the spell. "Castle…I need to talk to you." Then, becoming more aware of her surroundings, she noticed she had captured quite a couple people's attention in the bar. "Outside please…"

Her voice was almost a whisper as she approached him.

She pulled on the sleeve of his jacket as she led him to the parking lot of The Old Haunt. Only hours before had this been a place of complete mourning and utter chaos when a man with information on her mother's killer had been gunned down. His story forever silenced.

When she finally had him under the illumination of the lamps, she could see that his eyes were penetrating, looking deeply…at _her_.

"Richard Castle…" her voice was no steadier than it was at the bar. A breath escaped his lips at hearing his name on her tongue. "…I am speechless."

He said nothing.

"First, today when we went to get the man who ordered her…my mother, to die, you stepped in the way. That bullet was meant for me. What if you weren't wearing your vest?" Her eyes were defensive and she took a step towards him. Her pointer finger pressed against his chest. "What if it _missed_ the vest?"

"You would have done the same thing for me and you know that," he said. He also took a step forward. His face wavered near hers.

"That is…beside the point," she stammered. "It is not your place to save me."

There was silence for a long time.

"If not me," he said, quietly. "Then who? We are human, Kate. Everybody needs saving. "

"Not me…" Her heart hammered in her chest.

That was when her mind _reeled._

Past images of her mother picking her up when she fell off the swings at the park, her father driving her home from a high school party that turned for the worst not saying a word but holding her hand, then she saw him…Castle.

He spent time orchestrating this gesture, the letters, and the roses. He was the man who would take a bullet for her. The man who would _die_ for her. The man that held her hand throughout her mother's case when nobody was looking because that was what she wanted. No out in the open gestures. Secrecy. Denial of her human heart.

She wavered, finally realizing that their faces, their bodies…they hummed with proximity. He watched as her eyes fell downcast to the floor; ashamed at the wretched lie that escaped her lips.

That was when he reached out and hesitantly stroked the side of her face. With the feather-light touch of his fingers, he lifted her face from its downward gaze. Their eyes locked. Pain and longing burned within them. He let his lips waver near hers for a moment. His hand slid to her back as he pulled her in.

They stood there in a frozen suspension.

But then he kissed her. He tried to start out slowly, softly, but it was useless. Years of stored feelings towards her poured out as his lips finally touched hers. His lips parted when she kissed him back; fiercely. Their tongues warred against each other; dancing the dance they had played around each other for all of these wasted years.

Each one of them secretly knew this would eventually happen and now all they wanted was each other. Kate felt her stomach float as his lips continued to play against hers, driving her into a frenzied vertigo.

They broke. Breathlessly, they gazed at each other.

With foreheads touching, Kate was the first one to speak. Her voice came out, broken and it wavered. "I… I can't be with you."

"Please, no…" Castle began. He held her arms. "Don't say it."

"We are seeing other people." Her voice was almost a whisper in the dark night.

When she no longer clung to Castle, she broke from him, and looked into his eyes. Pain and yearning flickered in them.

"All I see is you."

"Castle…" she finally said. She could not even look at him. She did not want to watch her words shoot him in the heart. She pinched herself hoping that what she had to say next would not kill her heart as well. With a pained sigh she realized nothing could make this hurt any less.

"We. Us. It cannot be," she said.

He watched, his heart completely broken, as she walked away. It was only when she reached her car did she let the tears fall in droves.

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**Author's Note: I realize that this won't be exactly like the episode. One takes liberties and imagination. Want more to hold you over until the episode? Your feedback means so much to me. :)**


	2. The Things We Cannot Say

**Author's Note: My New Year's present to you. Yes you, the pretty thing reading this story. I genuinely thank you for your support from the bottom of my heart. It leaves me speechless. As always, enjoy the story I am doing my best to weave for these characters. **

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_Chapter Two: The Things We Cannot Say_**

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Castle came to her apartment at midnight.

In his hands, he shakily clasped a bottle of what he learned was her favorite type of wine: red.

That was a week before they kissed.

Kate remembered the fear in his eyes as she opened the door and peered at him. The fear that she would send him home after what had been a wretched day of her mother's case was evident on his face. Kate thought he would come though.

She had a feeling when he called to see if she was okay.

From the wavering tone of her voice he knew she was anything but.

"_I'm sorry,"_ he said. His hair was messy, and she secretly thought, adorably disheveled. She cursed herself for almost impulsively fixing a portion that stuck out funny by his ear. _"Tried to go to bed. Successfully attained a bed head, but no sleep."_

She smirked for the first time that day, but then reached out to flatten his crazy hair. He looked at her with startled eyes as he felt her hands rush through his hair. She pulled him close until she was done.

"_Now you have no bed head, or sleep."_

"_How cruel,"_ he said, still a bit breathless from what she had done. _"You leave me with nothing, detective." _

Kate did not dare to think if he was talking about her touching that ceased, or the bed head.

When she brushed away the thought though, she couldn't help but begin to shed her grief from the day. She smiled.

"_Now I am going to take your wine, too."_

Kate grabbed two wine glasses from her kitchen and collapsed into the cushions of her couch. She beckoned for him to join her. The room grew all too fuzzy and warm as they drank and said nothing.

They both knew the horrors of the day silently played in their minds. As he watched her drink, he noticed that her green eyes looked like they had when she received a letter from her mother's murderer that very day. It was the most ghastly mix of pain and numbness he had ever seen.

He knew he was crossing a line, but he reached out and took her hand anyway.

At first she stared at him, but then she laced his fingers with his.

_We're drunk, that's why I feel like this_, he thought. His heart raced at the simplest touch between them. He could have sworn though, by the look in her eyes, she felt the same way too.

That was when she let her head fall into his shoulder. He felt the beginnings of a small fire burning in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to hold her, kiss her right then and there, but he knew that was not his place to do so.

He looked down at her face nestled sweetly in his shoulder. It was filled with an unspeakable pain.

"_In the letter they sent,"_ she breathed. He could feel her warm breath on his shoulder. _"My mother's killer described me as weak. They said I would have found them by now if I did not let my emotions get in the way. They're right. Maybe I should move on instead of grieve like this. I can't help but think they're—"_

"_Wrong,"_ he finished. _"Terribly wrong."_

Her voice was muffled and quiet. _"And how do you know that?"_

He let his head rest on hers. His voice matched her hushed tone. _"For one, you can't push grief away. It comes. Let it come. It is a love for a person once they have left you. Really moving on is learning that they live on through your love. The families you touch. The lives you mend. Nobody can take that away. True grief for lost love is a beautiful thing."_

Lost love.

The simple phrase created a twist in Kate Beckett's stomach. Her heart fell. Lost love was more than the ending of earthy love of a person, feeling their touch, hearing the sound of their voice. Lost love is people turning away; letting passion and emotion for another person fade into the lifeless backdrop of life. It is the unseen murder of a human heart. Lost love. The phrase, in all of its bitter sadness, was them.

With a throbbing heart, she no longer allowed her head to rest in her shoulder. He slowly looked into her eyes. They were dark, pained, and filled with fear. Her heart ached as their faces dwindled closer. She could almost taste the wine on his lips when his breath became her breath.

He stroked her face gently.

"_Something wrong?"_ His question was weak; breathless.

That was when she saw his eyes. They filled with a darkened desire as she allowed her lips to waver near his. They remained stationary; intoxicated with the way they lost themselves in each other. Her breath was stolen as he closed in the space between them.

He kissed her warmly on the cheek.

When he pulled back slowly, he saw her face flush crimson. At first she was frozen. Wordlessly she then buried her face in his shoulder.

That was when he felt her tears wet on his shirt.

"_Kate, you are the strongest person I know."_

After a long period of silence, she let out a small chuckle. _"That must be the wine speaking,"_ she said, her voice wavered.

"_I mean it_." It was then when he put his hand on her back and wrapped her in his arms; taking in her scent, nestling himself in her hair, pulling her closer and feeling the warmth of her body against his.

Through the grief that stole their hearts, it was the proof that they were indeed alive.

"_I can't sleep. I haven't slept since this case opened."_ Her voice was a whisper in his ear. Her head was still buried into his shoulder.

"_I haven't either,"_ he said, rubbing small circles into her back.

"_Stay with me."_

Her words were simple, yet they took so much out of her to admit she needed him.

"_Is that the wine talking,"_ he whispered. She could feel his lips upturn in a grin against her ear.

"_No,"_ she said, almost half asleep in his arms on the couch. _"That was me."_

[][][]

Kate Beckett sat in her car completely immobile.

Flowing like blood in veins, the New York traffic zoomed with an unusual fluidity by her driver's window. It was quite different from its usual stop-and-go clogged artery norm.

The memories of what happened a week ago flooded her mind and she drowned in them. She remembered after that night waking up in his arms and watching his almost childlike face crinkle because he was still in deep sleep. It was the first decent sleep he had since they opened her mother's case. She noticed that her arm rest on his chest and his hand rest on her hips, but she let things be. The world could wait while she cherished the moment.

Why did she was savor it more than any moment she ever spent with Josh?

She feared the answer.

Tears fell across her face and she shouted over and over in the solidarity of her car, "I. _Don't._ Need. Saving."

It was the only thing that would distract her from the taste of _him_ that still lingered on her lips.

She felt like she was going to throw up.

It was the bright headlights of the cars and how quickly they approached her worn eyes, she convinced herself, which caused them to smolder with tears. That was why she cried. The numbness she felt was merely being tired from the day. That was why she felt hopeless. The unspeakable pain rising in her chest was the gravity that closure brought through her mother's case and now it would bear down upon her because one could never be truly happy, truly freed.

Like Richard Castle, those things were fantasy. Fairytales. Things that would never be.

That, she told herself, was why her heart felt anguish beyond words.

The traffic light had flickered from red to green. But she did not notice. Honking and lack of better words were shouted angrily at her. She pressed on the gas nearly clipping a car ahead of her.

"_Kate, you are lying to yourself." _

She heard the voice, the quiet whisper in her ear. When she slowly turned her head to the side where the voice came from, she nearly veered off the road.

The picture of her mother that rest on the dashboard seemed to glow eerily in the streetlights.

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Castle never remembered feeling the way he felt in his entire life. He felt dead, he reasoned, as if his heart had ceased to beat. It was as if there was a pressing weight in his chest. Pumping blood, living, it all was a joyless burden. He collapsed on the couch in the living room. His eyes devastatingly drifted to the ceiling. He just wanted this world that was crashing down around him to hit him and spare his heart of further misery.

"Where have you been? You look like hell."

Castle jumped, and the other occupant in the room could tell he was startled, which made her even more suspicious. Directly across from him, Gina sat on a sofa. She looked annoyed and fed up beyond belief. It did not take a Sherlock to figure that one out.

_I did not even notice her,_ he thought. He tried to wrap his mind around the reverberations one kiss could have. It absorbed and haunted his mind.

"I said," Gina pressed, waving a hand in his face, "Where have you been? You were supposed to take me out to dinner over two hours ago. Two. _Hours. _Ago."

Oh, did she annunciate her annoyances.

_Kissing somebody I am crazy about, but will never feel the same way about me_, he thought. He truly wanted to say that and prematurely free himself of the inevitable catastrophe to come, but he just remained silent, leaving her question unanswered. His eyes found refuge from her incriminating stare on the floor.

"Look at me," she said. He brought his eyes to hers. "You were with her again, weren't you? This whole week you've been—"

"We've been solving her mother's murder case," Castle finished.

"_Really?"_ she said. Her voice lacked any sympathy whatsoever. "And does solving that case involve having her over for dinner at the loft?"

"That was..." Castle stumbled on his words. "She had a break in the case. We just…"

"You know how I found out about that?"

Castle groaned in frustration, burying his head in his hands.

"Enlighten me."

"You were supposed to take _me_ out on a date that day. Not her. That's why you arranged that date for today? Remember? You told me that it completely slipped your mind, so you'd make it up to me today. Oh, it _slipped _your mind? Imagine my surprise days ago when I saw another woman heading to the loft! Your _muse_ probably had fun alright."

"Gina, it is not like that. We are not like that…"

"Since when did you two become a 'we'?" Her eyes flared with anger.

Castle's heart fell. He never was good with dishonesty.

"You don't just decide to feel that way about somebody. It just happens."

"What in the hell did you do?"

His answer was nearly breathless:

"I kissed her."

Gina stared on with wide-eyed horror.

"And she kissed you back!"

"No," he lied. But, in the back of his mind, he remembered the way she slipped her tongue into his mouth when she reacted to his lips on hers. He remembered the way she frantically nipped at his lips. "I kissed her and I had been wanting to for quite some time. You don't deserve to have somebody who is a living lie to you."

She could say nothing. Fury bubbled within her.

"If it makes you feel better, she is in love with somebody else."

Gina's eyes transformed into two angry slits. He could almost feel heat from the rage burning inside her. When her voice came, she was on the verge of screaming. But, her words came out spitefully controlled. Annunciated.

"Well, now you know how it feels to be me." She almost threw a sofa cushion at his head on the way out, but then she angrily threw it on the floor. "You really fucked up this time you bastard."

_More than you will ever know_, he thought as she slammed the door and left the apartment.

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Kate did not have to tell Lanie about kissing Castle when she went to the medical examiner's office.

She knew something was up immediately. Her first guess was she was lovesick…over Castle.

Kate felt exposed, naked really, at how quickly she assumed this. She did not even know what Castle was to her anymore. All she knew was he consumed her every thought.

Lanie asked, "When he kissed you did you kiss him back?"

Her pallid face nodded in a painful affirmation. _How did she even know he kissed me?_ she thought. _Is it written on my face?_ She had no idea it was.

Lanie nearly fell out of her chair when she nodded, her eyes downcast to the floor. "It is about damned time, girlfriend!" she blurted excitedly. "How did it happen? Where were you? What did he say before he kissed you?"

"Lanie, please…"

"Girl," she sat back down in her chair. "I just don't get the problem here, Kate. You and writer boy are like Mulder and Scully, rainy days and coffee. I don't know, you cannot explain it…you are just _meant_ for each other." She paused and a grin spread across her face. "I wanted to say that for quite some time, let me tell you."

"Lanie, that's ridiculous. It's not that simple."

"But it _is_," she reassured. "Go up to him and tell him that you want to try this. You don't have to say you are ready for anything. We never are ready. Just give yourselves a fighting chance already."

"Lanie, please _listen_, I can't."

"Give me one logical reason as to why you can't."

She stated it simply. "We are both seeing other people."

"Ah, I see." Lanie thought about it. "Well, you have to make the decision. You obviously felt something when he kissed you, did you not?"

Kate's face flushed scarlet at the memory.

"I'll take that as a wholehearted 'yes', so I would not let him get away this time." She smiled at her friend. "He loves you Kate. I could see it when he arranged that gesture for your mother. Now it is your turn to see this love for yourself. Live a little. Love."

"I really wish it were that simple," Kate said, hastily. Her chest was heaving with Lanie's words and she felt sick again. "I really need to go."

"Kate, somebody's coming. I hear foot—"

But it was too late.

Kate looked back at her friend with a quizzical expression, and in doing so, she collided with Castle. She was on her way out; he was on his way in the room.

Their bodies meshed together.

Her hands, to stop the force of their collision, were plastered to his chest. To catch her from toppling him, one of his hands was on the small of her back. The other was dangerously low on her hips.

She slowly looked up from the floor and into his eyes that wavered mere inches near hers.

They stood there, immobile. His breaths became her breaths.

Lanie could secretly tell that it took every fiber within their beings not begin kissing each other senseless in front of her.

"Well," she said, barely even breaking spell between them. "I'll be leaving you two to talk."

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**Author's Note: Hey, at least Castle did not have coffee in his hands this time. P.S. It's a slow dance, but they will get there. I have found the best "love stories" are those build in meaningful increments stitched through the emotions and backgrounds of characters. **

**Take a second and review? If not, you might never know what happens in the M.E. office. *winks and cues dramatic music***


	3. The Things That Make You Come Undone

_Chapter Three: The Things That Make You Come Undone_

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_Kate's hands cascaded down his chest in a silent rush. This was Castle's cue to let go, and hers as well, but their hands still lingered on each other.

Lips still hesitant to kiss the other, they savored the feeling of their warm breaths whispering in the stillness. At that moment, he buried her in a hug. She did not let go. Just the feeling of her body in his arms nearly made him come undone with sadness; a suppressed longing.

As he held her, Castle remembered the time Kate took out a scrapbook at her apartment when she had him over for the case. It was a surreal surprise to the author when she painted a picture of who her mother was. Memories, cherished times with her, pictures; they poured around them through the stories she told and the photographs they absorbed themselves in.

It was like an embrace of her memory.

He remembered as the photographs came to a stop in the album. He dreaded what would come next.

He knew blank pages would follow.

She turned her face to him as they sat close on the sofa.

"_That's the last one,"_ she whispered. He looked down to see a picture of Joanna hugging her daughter tightly in her arms. A moment captured, but never to be relived again. A mother forever with her daughter…only in the photograph. Castle remembered wanting to kiss her, then and there, as she leaned into him and her head rest numbly on his shoulder.

"_The last pages are blank,"_ she murmured. _"No life lasts long enough. Nothing lasts."_

The empty pages that followed hurt more than the filled ones.

"_I know,"_ he said, slowly arching his neck to kiss her forehead. _"But some things last, you just have to find them. Whatever that is, it makes life worth living."_

Most peoples' lives, as stories, have unfinished endings. The ending of life has no wrapped up conclusiveness, but rather, it is like a novel that comes to no finality, and a book critic would toss it aside, exasperated. The pure breathings of human sorrow in the resolution of life rarely can be described in words. It can never be understood, analyzed, or effectively transformed into fluid language. Memories are stored glimpses of humanity. In a sense, the voids of blank pages were as close as Castle could get to that raw grief Kate Beckett felt. He could not begin to fathom her loss.

"I want to be with you." His voice was now a whisper in her ear, a silent plea for a new beginning as they embraced in the small medical examiner's room.

At his words, a pool of heat melted in her chest.

"I need…" _Your lips on mine, your touch, your laugh, your words…all of you, _the words danced in her mind, but quickly died on her tongue. She said nothing as they fell through. The things we do not say and should, the things we intended to do; they fill the expanse of remorseful blank pages of our life's story.

She pulled away then, watching his eyes dull at the absence of her touch. She sat on an autopsy gurney, eyes downcast to the floor. She tried to be guarded; instead her emotions were an open book.

"Nothing lasts, Richard Castle."

Her words would forever remain the pages of his story. Words, like ink, are permanent.

"Memories last."

"And when they fade?"

He said what he knew, what he believed, the only thing her murdered mother could leave behind:

"There is love."

She turned away from him then, slipping her legs along the opposite side of the gurney.

"It fades."

She could feel his presence behind her. His voice was hushed in her ear.

"Then that wasn't love."

When she turned to look at him, his face was right beside hers.

Her reply was merely allowing her hands to reach for his face. She let her forehead fall against his and his hands held her face. His unsteady breath was electricity on her skin; her hands, she noticed, were wavering.

"You're trembling…" he whispered.

"So are you…"

Before she could utter another word, he began to kiss her, slowly, passionately on the nape of her neck. It was a torturous ascent as his intimate kisses traveled up her neck…gradually. He laid her down on the gurney and she gasped at the sensation of his touch, his kisses. His hair glided through her fingers as his kisses almost scaled to her mouth. She felt like all of her breath was wonderfully stolen from her as his hand slipped under her shirt, over her bare stomach.

"May I?" he breathed over her.

"Let me." She pulled him in over her. Their eyes burned with desire.

She was ready to kiss him on the lips when the door to the medical examiner's office opened.

They flung apart.

[][][]

Moments earlier Lanie saw a figure approaching her office, with a trembling step, she moved towards their visitor: Roy Montgomery.

"I need to talk to Kate. It's urgent," the captain pressed. "She said she was going to chat with you for a little bit and get the autopsy report. You know where she is?"

Lanie's eyes went blank. "Uh, she went to talk with me."

"Is she still here?" Roy reached for the doorknob of her room.

Lanie awkwardly slipped her body between the captain and the door. _Kate owes me big time_, she thought as the captain stared at her incredulously...after taking two giant steps away from her.

"What the heck is going on here?"

"Ha, n-o-t-h-i-n-g." She plastered a grin on her face.

"Spelling out the word 'nothing' will only kill a couple more seconds," Roy said, dryly.

He lightly moved her away from the door.

"Castle and Kate are _TALKING,_" she said, loudly. It was one desperate attempt to shout Kate and Castle out of…well, out of whatever the hell they were doing in there.

It took less than five seconds for Roy Montgomery to exit the room. Pale faced.

"I…" He stood there, eyes wide and focused ahead. "That was what you call talking? _Talking,_ Lanie?"

"They said they were talking," Lanie offered, innocently.

"You know what I need after today?"

"What?" Lanie was scared.

"A good, badass drink," Roy was still dazed. "But, that is after I find some good anti-hallucinogens and/or what Castle has been spiking Kate's coffee with."

"Good luck with that, sir," Lanie offered.

But, Roy had already left. He almost tripped over the mat on the way out. Lanie sheepishly entered the room. Kate was trying to flatten her messy hair, but surprisingly, offered no comment of denial.

"Look," Kate said, turning to Castle. For the first time Lanie saw Kate's intimacy towards him as she quickly placed her hand on his. Their faces wavered close together. "I need to talk this out with the captain. I'll be back to-"

She leaned in and whispered the rest in his ear. Whatever it was, it made Castle's face flush a scarlet she didn't even know existed. Before anyone could inquire any further, she was gone.

Lanie raised an eyebrow, "She'll be back to…?"

"…finish." He answered breathlessly without even thinking.

Lanie nearly fell over.

"Now, as for you writer boy, I have a little job for you." She inched towards him, her eyes narrowed. "You don't mess this up with her. Got it?"

He blushed and saluted her. "Yes, ma'am."

[][][]

Kate rushed into the captain's office and shut the door behind her. With a racing heart and heavy breathing, she awkwardly glanced at Roy who was staring at her, wide-eyed.

"And to think you ran in my office three years ago with the exact same look on your face when you begged me to get rid of him." He smiled lightly and motioned for her to sit across from at his desk. She slowly obliged. "Now, if this could have happened _sooner_. Well, let's just say I would have been a wealthier man." He patted his wallet pocket mournfully. "Lost quite a couple bets."

Kate turned white as the captain chuckled, but his laugh faded into frozen features. She shifted nervously in her seat as silence pervaded, knowing that his mannerisms only meant he had bad news.

"We aren't a couple, we just—"

"Don't explain, Beckett." He almost looked annoyed. "What is important is that you two work this out _and _get actual work down around here. That's my area of concern."

She wanted to counter that, but there was no use in denying things to a man who had just witnessed…well, enough to know something was up.

"Kate…" The captain's expression became grave. "I don't even know if I can go through and tell you what I had to say earlier."

"Sir, it won't be a problem, Castle and I—"

"I am not the slightest bit irritated about that. Please know that before I say anything." The captain placed his head in his hands and forced himself to get on with it. "You're in a world all your own lately, Kate Beckett, and I am not sure if you are aware of that. Your dad had to reach us because you haven't talked to him since the ending of Joanna's case. He's worried about you."

"Sir, I—"

"You also forgot to check your voicemail this morning. So, the phone on your desk kept ringing and ringing with the message alerts. I picked it up then." He took in a deep breath. "I am very saddened to say there was an appalling message waiting for you."

Kate was silent. A world of wretched possibilities swam in her mind. Josh? Gina? The answer, however, was much, much worse. She knew that when Montgomery took her hand. He never did that.

"In the…in the message," his voice wavered, "they described down to the last bullet hole and knife wound as to how they would kill him and have you watch."

Kate's heart raced. Her world was viciously being thrown off its axis.

"Who?" she asked. But, with a twisting knot forming in her stomach, she already knew the answer.

"Castle."

Kate's breath hitched in her throat.

As if he read her impending question, Roy continued. "As for the message, we have no idea who left it. The call was traced to a payphone. We don't even know the gender of the caller. They used a computer simulated voice. We need to get on this, and now. Imagine the storm this would create if the press knew _Richard Castle_ has a serial killer out for him."

When Roy took her in, he felt extremely remorseful, but he needed her to hear him out for this last, painful point. It was the only way Roy knew how to handle the present situation before him.

"This means we have assigned you to protect his family until further breaks on this case can be made with these threats, and until arrangements can be made for a safe house," he pressed. "And if his best possible protection requires you to focus on a professional verses personal level…then that's what has to happen. Am I clear?"

"Sir," she pressed her forehead in the palm of her hand. "I will do everything in my power to protect him and his family, but you have to understand we—"

"So you are a couple. In that case, we need to make other arrangements. Detective, when emotions run deep—"

That was when she got up and left. Roy called desperately after her.

With pain rising in her chest, she tried to imagine telling Castle this news. But, she thought, afterwards she would embrace him and tell him they would get through this…together.

She was sure of what she wanted now. What she _needed_ now.

Him.

She wasn't turning back, but yet she felt so…unsure.

Maybe it was because she was right. She knew nothing ever lasts.

And of that, she was a firm believer.

[][][]

Castle's heart almost stopped.

"_Kate looked devastated when the captain told her,"_ he overheard Esposito telling Lanie when he came over to the medical examiner's office. _"I know they are partners, but hey, something deeper has been going on with those two and it started during Joanna's case. His hand would reach out for hers as if they were the last two people on earth."_

Lanie gave a saddened glance and then reached for his hand. He took it and let his thumb rub small circles on it.

Her eyes were distant as she said, _"This is going to tear her apart. You see, I think they're—"_

She was about to say more, but then she saw Castle listening to this entire conversation. He knew about the threats made against him, and Kate's distress over the situation. He ran when they both called him back to talk.

"_I need to see Kate,"_ was his reply.

When he got the first floor of the precinct, he nervously awaited what seemed like eternity for the elevator to come. When it arrived, he entered and saw a slim woman with pale skin and jet black hair staring back at him. Like Castle, she had piercing blue eyes. But hers had a perceptively different edge to them.

"Detective Madison," she offered as an introduction. "I'm new in the robbery unit."

Her voice was lower, almost a drone.

"Hello," he said, absentmindedly waiting for her to press the elevator button to the third floor, but she didn't. She just took him in. In one point in time he would have found her almost alluring, but in comparison with Kate, people blurred into the backdrop of life.

"Third floor, please," he said, tapping his foot with nervous anticipation.

"Sure thing," she pressed a button and began to scratch at the base of her short hair. Castle noticed that a serpent tattoo crept up her neck.

At that moment he also realized she had pressed the wrong elevator button.

"You accidently pressed the basement button," he told her.

Her now icy blue eyes twinkled. "That was no accident, Richard Castle."

He froze.

She grabbed out a knife and held it to his throat as they reached the basement. She yanked him past the shooting range, where, years ago, Castle remembered Kate held his arms to teach him the proper way to fire a gun. He felt defenseless now as his attacker stuck a knife in his back to keep him moving.

Her teeth were clenched in rage.

"When I make threats," she said, smacking his body against the wall on the lower floor, "I have every intention of carrying them out."

[][][]

Esposito tugged on Lanie's sleeve so she would see Kate approaching them in the M.E. offices.

The detective's words came in a rush.

"Is Castle still here? He was not around the offices, I just checked."

"No, he left," Lanie said. She put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Hon, I heard about the threats. I am so sorry."

It was like Lanie had said nothing as she continued; panic was evident in her voice. "I need to see him. I need to talk to him."

"He said he was looking for you." Esposito pointed where he had left moments before.

Kate looked blankly down the stretch of the hallway. "I just went that way. I should have seen him."

[][][]

Castle's body convulsed as a knife twisted deeper into his shoulder.

"You can't imagine my horror when my father was caught for _her_ mother's murder."

His attacker's eyes were merciless as she stooped over his body crumpled on the floor. She beat him until he was too weak to stand up. In case he mustered up the strength to do so, however, she now had the glistening knife held to his throat.

"You have no fucking idea what it is like to be raised by your father to become a serial killer."

"I cannot imagine," he gasped. His cold sweat mixed with his blood. It felt like an ice bed on the basement concrete.

"Well," she said, looming over his body. "Where in the hell is she? Beckett? She should have been here by now."

"You wouldn't—"

"Who do you think I came here for? You?" Her tone was incredulous. "No bastard, I want to silence her before she gets me, too. And do you ever think, for one moment, that I wanted this fucking life? No."

"It does not have to b-be like this," he said, eyes shutting tightly when the knife returned and thrust deeper into his shoulder.

"Quiet," she pulled a cloth over his mouth to silence him. "You _shut _your goddamned mouth."

"Get the hell away from him."

The woman with the serpent tattoo craned her neck to see Kate Beckett looming over her with a gun. With a slight motion she whipped out her own revolver and faced her. Both Beckett and the woman were on opposite sides of Castle's body. He tried to get up, but then he stumbled and fell. Kate winced as she heard his head hit the concrete floor of the basement.

The woman smiled.

"I see I have found your one weakness, Beckett."

To toy with Kate, the woman continued to hold a gun to her, to keep her in checkmate, while stooping to Castle's level on the floor. Kate Beckett shuddered as she watched the woman's blood red lips play across his. All Castle could do was try to mumble words against her; his own blood leaving him too quickly to act against her.

The attacker looked up at Beckett. "Did that make you _sick_, detective?"

Beckett raised her gun in alignment with the attacker's chest.

"I wouldn't do that," she smiled, holding the knife to his neck. "I plan to have you learn that justice is simply revenge in the end. You seek revenge for wrongs in the same way we do. People die on both sides. What better way to show you than a practical demonstration?"

"What the hell is this about?"

"My father, I assume you know him? He's in jail now. Maybe awaiting death row if they transfer him from the state of New York. His name is James Harrison. Familiar?"

The name flushed revulsion throughout the course of her body. That was the name of her mother's murderer. One person, one identity that would change her life forever simply because of one of her mother's court cases as a lawyer. Joanna defended the truthful. She had no idea that the man on the opposite side of the case was a cold-blooded serial killer.

Kate watched in disgust as Miss Harrison stroked Castle's face with her leather glove. She almost grinned as Castle's eyes looked further and further away. Every time Kate tried to shoot at her, disarm her, the trained assassin was ready with a weapon to give him the final blow that his body would not withstand. As Kate caught a glimpse of his chest heaving, she knew it would not be too much longer. She had to end this.

"Leave him out of this. _Please._" Her voice, she knew, was faltering with desperation.

"I cannot do that, Kate Beckett." The serial killer pressed light kisses to Castle's nose and resumed speaking. "I watched him arrange the roses on your mother's grave. I have seen you two kiss in that alley. He loves you. And, you're madly in love with him."

"I—I"

"I am merely destroying the part of you that matters most. _Him. _By the look in your eyes, I can tell you know that. Too bad it took this long for you to figure it out for yourself. "

Miss Harrison then let the kisses scale to his mouth. Her tongue slipped in, her teeth bit at his lips.

"S-stop," he tried to say, but his words were lost. "_Kate—_"

"You can't have him," Kate breathed, watching his eyelids grasp shut in pain. "_STOP._"

The woman smiled up at her only to continue kissing him, harder now.

"Watch this, Beckett." She slowly began to unbutton Castle's shirt with one hand. Another one held a gun to his head. "This might soothe your lust. You ever wonder what his body looks like under all of these clothes?"

With a jerk of fabric, she exposed his scarred shoulders and heaving chest to her.

"I-I swear if you…if you touch him again I—"

"Getting emotional are we?" Miss Harrison's blue eyes swelled with a barbaric fervor. "Your mother was emotional when she died. Did you know that? She was the first person I helped kill."

Kate's world held by the thinnest thread of hope went spiraling down in a sickening twist around her as these words were uttered. Her heart fell. She noticed Castle was barely breathing.

"Her last words were '_tell my family I love them,_' before she was stabbed," Miss Harrison laughed tauntingly at her mother's last words as she wiped some blood from the knife to the concrete. "Well," she said, holding her own revolver up to Kate's head. Her other hand threateningly wavered over Castle's neck with the knife. "Before you go, she _loved_ you." She pointed to Castle and put a hand on his bare chest. "He _loved_ you."

A shot rang through the basement.

A body froze. No life, no writing.

An ending with blank pages.

* * *

**I really doubt that her mother's case will be wrapped up all nicely in one episode. I feel like this killer and their cronies lie deeper than that. Or is it my paranoia? My love for conflict?-Feedback? Thoughts? Opinions? They mean the absolute world to me. **


	4. The Things That Leave You Broken

_Chapter Four: The Things That Leave You Broken_

_

* * *

_Barely breathing, Miss Harrison crumpled to the floor.

A sense of victory rushed through her as the knife in her hand went plunging into Castle's exposed abdomen. She crashed on top of him.

Castle gasped. His eyes opened wide.

Kate's scream flooded the room.

His body flushed crimson liquid. It drained of its color. He was frozen. Pallid. White.

Like blank pages.

"It's over," Miss Harrison breathed faintly. She pulled herself up from his body with clenched teeth. The serial killer held her arm close to her body. The wound from the gunshot Kate inflicted already poured blood. She watched as Kate flailed with her gun. Her heart, her mind, her very being, ceased to function.

The detective forgot how to breathe.

She collapsed beside Castle on the floor and reached for him desperately. She longed to affirm his tangibility through touch. Her hands held his face and she pressed her forehead to his that was covered in blood...and becoming cold to her touch.

"_Love…_" he gasped. Her stomach did an elevator plunge in the way he addressed her. His voice was shallow; frantic. "Knife…"

Her trembling hands wavered across the bare skin of his abdomen and then held the knife that was thrust into his tissue. With an upward motion she pulled out the straight blade. She screamed so she would not have to hear the sound of his flesh. The detective shed her black jacket and attempted to block the blood flow.

Miss Harrison, clutching her shot arm, walked behind Kate. She steadied another knife in her other hand. She brought two for a reason.

If only Kate knew _the_ knife Castle was warning her about.

She could almost taste the detective's fear and she watched her gasp frantically as the writer convulsed and faded before her eyes.

Miss Harrison gripped the knife tighter.

It glinted in the air.

It was almost too easy, she thought. The detective was smoldering under the prospect of losing her almost lover. All she had to do was bury the knife into her flesh and watch her scream, wither, and die. It was ritual; she had done this so many times before.

"Breathe me," Kate whispered.

When he ceased to breathe, she began rescue breaths. She pressed her lips to his, letting her breath become his. Her heart tumbled when she realized that this was the first time she allowed her lips to come to his first. It made her mind cry out in agony, in regret.

As she breathed in him, she felt his chest rise. He spluttered up blood and began to breathe. She pleaded him to stay with her. Miss Harrison almost started laughing at the pitiful display. She then clambered behind the detective and let the knife braze Kate's abdomen, leaving no cuts, but receiving her attention.

The serial killer watched her chest heave with horror. Kate slowly turned to her attacker.

"Like mother," The killer said, sending the knife plunging into her side, "like daughter."

She watched the detective's body collapse into the writer's. Their blood intermingled on the concrete.

Miss Harrison slipped into the darkness of the basement where her team was now ready to take her away…

A free woman.

[][][]

**(Moments Before)**

"This is my fault."

Roy Montgomery poured himself some whiskey and settled back into his desk. After placing a hand on his throbbing head, he then turned his attention Lanie and Esposito who were gathered in his office. Little did the captain know they were holding hands under the table in a form of silent support. A cold comfort of sorts.

He offered them a drink. They declined.

"We came in here to see what we can do to work this out. We want to keep Castle and Kate together through this," Esposito said, getting up to put the captain's whiskey supply well out of his reach. The captain grimaced at the lack of alcohol numbness he would now have.

"I can't see her like this," Lanie pleaded. "It makes me sick to do nothing as her life comes bearing down like this again. I know, and I am certain she…"

Esposito watched her stumble.

"...needs him," she finished weakly.

The captain's face turned a sickly color as he drank the remainder of his alcohol in his shot glass. He said nothing.

"There is something else you are not telling us," Esposito stood, glaring down at the captain. The captain, eyes concentrated to his desk, was lost in a dull void.

"Nothing."

Lanie rose from her seat, joining Esposito. "We still have time to fix things."

He closed his eyes. "No. There is no time. The damage has been done. The threats have been made. This is _my_ fault."

"No," Esposito reassured. "You didn't call these bastards to hunt them."

The captain then looked up at him. His eyes were dark. "I have been receiving threats since the beginning of her mother's case. I investigated them myself to keep out bad press. So yes, this is my fault. I made the mistake…I…"

That was when they heard faint gunshots from the basement. Immediately they knew it was not somebody practicing in the shooting range.

The anguished screams that rose through the floor told another story.

[][][]

Bloodbath.

That was the only word that came to Captain Montgomery's mind. He stood there, transfixed in horror at the scene before him. In his haze, he did not even know that the department upstairs already notified the medical personnel until they rushed into the room. Gurneys, Castle's body, Kate's body, they whipped by in a dreadful whirl.

"Captain?" Ryan looked up into his face and put his hands on his shoulders. "W-what…what happened here?"

Ryan's voice hitched in his throat when he realized he was walking on Castle and Kate's blood. He looked like he was about to throw up.

But, the captain said nothing, he stumbled into the back wall and his legs buckled under. With heavy breathing and horror-struck eyes, he watched the world rush past him as he sat on the floor.

_You let her join the murdered, Roy. You let her mother die, too. Also, a man who walked beside her…_

The swirling thoughts left viscous scars on his mind. His breathing quickened to a panicked rush.

Years ago when he took over as captain, he remembered Joanna's case. He also knew her killer. He was an ex-cop with what he now learned was a barbaric pastime. His daughter must have carried out the deed, he thought. The girl with the short black hair. His head pounded violently because this was the same daughter he once let practice at the shooting range when she was eighteen.

Years ago, her father, Joanna's killer, was a friend. A cop. One of them.

With horror, Roy lifted his hands from where they caught his sinking body. He felt something cold soaking his hands.

Crimson.

He was covered in their blood.

[][][]

Josh sat in an empty E.R. room. His face, illuminated by a surgical lamp, was filled with unspeakable pain. His clenched fists rest on metal gurney.

A searing picture lay before him.

Her face still burned in his mind and the way she let herself fall into his arms. She looked so safe; madly passionate. His stomach plunged as his eyes traced the way his lips played across hers and the way she grabbed for him desperately in that alleyway.

And all this time and she never said anything.

She ignored his calls, his texts, even when he came over to her house, she was not there. She was probably making love with him in bed for all he knew. As Josh trembled holding the picture, he didn't know if he was filled with more pain or rage at what had happened. He just knew that Richard Castle tampered with somebody he loved; somebody he should never call his.

Along with the picture he found on his office desk, there was a brief message:

_She kissed him. She pulled her body against his. How do you feel?_

He let out a shout of frustration, his fists hammering into the wall. That was when a fellow surgeon came into the room. She looked at him with confusion, raising a questioning eyebrow. He merely forced a façade that would at least make him look marginally okay, and tucked the letter in his pocket. He followed her to the surgery prep room.

"Meat wagon is rolling in. Just got paged. Pretty bad stabbing which is bound to cause a cardioinhibitory. Prep for a cardioarterial repair quickly. Also, wound stitching. There are high stakes with this one."

Josh merely nodded.

"Get to it," his partner said, snapping a finger in his face, impatiently. "You're doing surgery on Richard Castle."

[][][]

There was something terribly ironic with the arrangements of this whole downward spiral, Josh thought. He watched as Richard Castle's heart beat up and down in his chest. Its scarlet contours glowed under the surgical lamp.

This was the heart that loved her. The same heart that, if it would continue to beat, would take her away.

"What are you waiting for?"

His captain looked at him in desperation as Castle's heart monitor beeped with a dreaded urgency. A deadpanned note…

_His heart is stopping,_ he thought, watching the intricate workings of his heart go into arrest. _It's over._

Josh merely stared up at his captain. His scalpel wavered over Castle's heart.

[][][]

"The stab wound missed her vital organs."

Jim Beckett sat in the waiting room of the E.R., nearly lifeless as the doctor rushed in to tell him about his daughter's condition. Somehow, he always knew he would be in this place. He was here almost every time he closed his eyes for sleep though his nightmares. Every dream would start and end in the same way. His wife and daughter were stabbed. It ended with them following him, their ghosts never being able to say a word. They only haunted him.

He nodded at the doctor. Like in his nightmare, he would try and change the inevitable course of things. "She will be okay."

It was more of a statement rather than a question that would invoke an answer he might not want to hear.

"The problem is the depth of the wound. There might be complications."

It amazed Jim Beckett as to how somebody could be so cold. No comfort. Not even an: "I am _so_ very sorry," with little or no emotion behind it. The doctor informing him of his daughter's state was as nonchalant in his speech as a traffic reporter would be when talking about blocked roads.

He clasped his eyes shut, fiercely.

"I will _not_ lose her," he gasped, tears finally leaking down his face.

He then felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned to look, it was woman with reddish hair and deep blue eyes. The whites were red, yet something was comforting in them.

This was not the course his nightmares took.

Martha Rodgers embraced him.

[][][]

Falling in love is like drowning.

A person in love is like a dreamer, who finds that the world around them is not their hopes, but rather a reality more haunting than they could imagine. One day, they realize that the life they had planned will never work. Perfection lies in imperfection.

Love is never planned. It is.

The dreamer drowns in it.

In that way, their lover is like the sea. It envelops them along with their plans for the future. It inhibits their breath, their heartbeat, all of their thoughts. They are consumed in the waters of uncertainty. The lover is needy.

Josh never made her drown.

She felt safe with him. There was no risk, he didn't absorb her mind, and he never made that connection with her. Josh might be the best choice, the safest choice, but that was not what she needed. She needed to be immersed in somebody who was madly in love with her.

She needed to drown.

When Kate woke up from her surgery for her abdominal stab wound, the first thing she saw were blue eyes. She felt a faint smile come to her lips.

"Castle?"

Her voice was weak; rasping. Finally she felt the breathing tube removed from her throat and she was given water to speak. She squinted in the light shifting through the windows.

"It's dad," he said, grasping her hand.

"Where's Castle?"

Her father clasped her hand tighter and heaved a breath. "Katie, I'd get some rest."

[][][]

She clung onto his body, screaming.

His lifeless eyes were glassed over, his mouth was frozen as if he had more to say, but he would never be able to say anything ever again, or whisper in her ear that he wanted to be with her. His hands would never write more beautiful words, or dance across her skin. His lips, an ashen grey, would never play across hers. His body, rigid and stiff to her touch, would never join with hers in the darkness of the night.

Josh pulled her off of him.

"You have to let go," he said, pulling on her shoulders as she began slipping to the floor. "We did all we could. His heart ruptured."

She pushed him away and clasped the author's white hand.

"You're _lying_ to me!"

"Kate that was all we could do. Now, I don't want you to hurt. He was in so much pain. He's free now."

Her voice was a rasp. "I'm not free."

"Kate, you need to stop this." He tried to pull her from the author, but her muscles were frozen like his corpse. "You need to recover from your surgery. Be strong, _please_."

"I want to be with you," she said, ignoring Josh. She pulled the author's face to hers. "I never answered you, but I want to be with you. I want you."

"Kate, he is _dead_!"

"Castle, I want to be with you…"

"_KATE!"_

Her father woke her up from her nightmare, pulling her up as she threw up in a garbage can.

They were both in her apartment about two weeks after the stabbings. Two weeks after she woke up to find her father beside her. Kate was never able to see Castle on account of the serial killer's threats that still continued. Now Castle was in a coma. Kate, still plagued with pain from her stabbing, was on a high dose of morphine. That, along with her depression medication she needed again, was a deadly cocktail for pervasive numbness.

It was the perfect fuel for nightmares.

"Katie," He said, holding her arms. "Have you been taking your depression meds?"

Her eyes were dark; wild. "I started to go on lower dosages when I met…"

She threw up again thinking about him. Her stomach wrenched with pain.

"I know, I know, Katie," he said. He held her. "He seemed to have turned you back since mom died, but now…now you need them again."

She collapsed into her pillows, clutching the pills in her hands as if they were a poison. "I never told him..."

Her father wrapped her in an embrace. "Katie, he saved you. And somewhere deep down he will know that."

"He's going to…to leave me. And, there is nothing I can do. I can't see him. He's slipping." She motioned for him to depart and leave her there because she felt terribly sick. "Nobody needs to see me like…like this."

"Detective Katherine Beckett." His heart still wrenched at her words, her fear of losing him, her shame. "You picked me up off the floor of the kitchen when I was drunk after your mother died. You held me up to walk down the isle of the church with her casket when I was too intoxicated to walk. You took a handful of dirt and put it over her grave for me, when, if I would have stooped over, I would have fallen in her grave as well. Don't you dare be shameful. I love you."

"Dad—"

"Now, I am taking you to see him no matter what these people say." He took her hand. "I am going to do what I think is right because I never did this for you before. I am not going to be your burden anymore. I am going to be your father."

[][][]

She watched his chest flutter with the aid of a respirator.

Her father knew he would be this way, but other things were worse. Things like regretting never seeing somebody. The human condition is fragile. Falling apart, dying, are intricate parts of this condition, unwavering in its darkness.

Kate buried her face in her father's shirt. He held her heaving body tightly in his arms.

"May I please talk to Kate?"

Her father turned to see Josh, who had a grave expression on his face. He turned to see his daughter nod lifelessly and he left for the waiting room, leaving them to talk. Josh reached out to take Kate's hand, but she did not let his fingers touch hers.

"I see you have made a choice," he said, turning his head to the writer in the coma. Josh then took a shallow breath. His face then flared with anger. "So…how did it feel to have his lips on yours…your body pressed against his?"

"I—"

"He was a celebrity. People find out." He then took a step closer. "But it does not have to be this way. He has little time left and—"

"I want to be with him."

"What?" His tone was incredulous. "The only thing you will be with is his corpse. Don't you see that he is what he writes? A fantasy. A _story._"

As Castle stirred he saw Josh advance to her, he leaned in to kiss Kate Beckett. Castle's heart fell as he pressed his lips against her, but she forcefully pushed him away. "I've made my choice. It's not you."

That was when Castle's respirator beeped with activity, it signaled the author's life.

"Somebody else go detach that goddamned thing," Josh shouted down the hall. He looked once more at Kate Beckett and walked away. She watched as nurses rushed to detach the machine. They checked his vitals; he was breathing, coughing, and then, speaking.

All the while, he watched her from outside the doorway with a smile.

It burned at her core and melted her every sadness.

If only, for a moment.

When the room was emptied, she made her way to him. Both of them were motionless; simply looking at each other, trying to wrap their minds around their existences which were suppose to end, their bodies which were suppose to be six feet under, their love which shouldn't be, but was.

They drowned in each other.

Finally she reached out to touch his face. No words were spoken between the two as he weakly pulled her into the bed. His hand traveled under her shirt and her breathing hitched as he slowly let his fingers travel up her abdomen's stitches.

Her kisses traveled, creating wildfire on his weakened flesh, starting at his neck and then falling to his stitched shoulders. He shuddered at the sensation her lips created on his wounds. She wanted to kiss him on the lips, but then she stopped, not ready for the leap herself.

His blue eyes were piercing in the low lighting of the room as he lay across from her.

"You're alive," he whispered, holding her face.

Her hand traveled to his chest where she felt his racing heart.

"So are you."

From the window, Mr. Beckett closed his eyes. He pulled up a chair and sat guard by the door. His heart brimmed with hope.

If only he knew that somebody was watching them.

Kate felt the flutter of his heart beating against her hand. The author's hand was wrapped around her waist. Despite the feeling of his stitches under her fingers, for the first time in two weeks, she had the peace she needed to sleep.

In the darkest times, you realize that everything around you is broken, and in process of fading, and dying, for that is life. What makes the difference when you come to this realization is how you deal with it. Who you let in your life. Who you let go. How you cope with this utterly broken world.

For in the pain, in the darkest moments that obscure your life, there is healing.

If only, for a moment.

* * *

**For that one scene, I sense I had death threats uttered against me. Am I right? Hopefully you stuck around for the end of this chapter. I am speechless at the support I have been given for this story. Please continue to give feedback (you got this far). As always, your comments and suggestions mean the world to me. **


	5. The Things Done in the Darkness

**I am in awe at the support. You give passion to my purpose. Look forward to a particular moment later on. *winks and presents new chapter***

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_Chapter Five: The Things Done in the Darkness_

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"_This is how you kill someone."_

Miss Harrison remembered when she was a child. In her memory, her father was smiling as he showed her his video of Joanna Beckett's stabbing. He told her to take notes as to how his cuts, his stabs at her, precise and violent, were better than hers ever would be.

Joanna's killer gloated in his work.

"_You were trembling,"_ she remembered him saying, alcohol heavy on his breath. His pointer finger poked at her figure on the television. _"Don't look into their eyes."_

"_I was scared, dad. So scared,"_ she breathed.

He got up then and yanked her hair, thrashing her head against the couch. _"Of goddamned what?"_

The answer rested with the demons laughing in her father's eyes.

[][][]

Castle awoke in the hospital with a violent jolt.

The haunting blur of voices in his head faded into a whisper, a murmur, as he came to consciousness. He tried to reclaim his breath and remind himself that his nightmare had ended. The detective was _not _dead.

Kate was right beside him; his arms were wrapped around her in the hospital bed.

He traced her abdominal muscles with his fingertips. With a grim disparity, Castle realized it was the only thing that reassured him a knife was not plunging into her side again.

In the darkness, in the secrecy of the hospital room, he kissed the top of her head, lightly, as not to wake her.

Ever since the beginnings of her mother's case, she was brutally murdered in his dreams.

Every night her body would flush crimson as a knife would come tearing into her chest, a murderer laughed at her helplessness in the obscured darkness. He never saw the face of the killers who would escape into the night, he only saw hers.

Her stare was penetrating as she would call his name.

"_Rick,"_ she would breathe, she would plead, drawing her hands to his broken face.

This was the point where he would pull the knife from her chest causing her body to convulse. Kate would pull him closer as she wrenched over in pain. Castle pulled her into him, wrapping her wound in his coat.

He held her in his arms on the frozen cement.

"_She looks so beautiful,"_ Kate would say, her eyes slowly closing as she would look up at him. The faintest smile was a ghost on her face, already drained of its human color.

Castle felt his stomach wrench. His hand brushed her colorless face. _"Who?"_

"_Mom."_

With the last remaining fibers of her strength, of who she was, Kate pulled him. Time, the merciless robber, had taken everything they could have been. Her last movement on this earth was her lips meeting his.

It lasted for only a moment.

Kate gasped. _"You freed me."_

She died. Her eyes were glassy, open to a new light.

The dream then took him in a blur to her grave. In his hand, he grasped a solitary rose. As he did, the thorns sliced into his hands. Then, with all the life his voice could muster, the writer would scream out to her. He would call her back into his arms, into his life, into his heart. But she was six feet under, rotting in the ground.

Kate would never answer.

The rose, the last rose he could ever give her, would wither and fade as he waited for her reply.

Time rushed by. Castle's hair turned white. He kept vigil.

His arthritic knees would still kneel at her gravesite. This vigil would end with his life. In the conclusion of his dream, he would crumple and fade like the last rose.

Even reflecting on the dream was a nightmare itself.

In the shadows of the hospital room, he pulled her resting body against his.

Her breath on his arms was the only proof he would accept that she was alive.

[][][]

Jim Beckett looked at the clock of the recovery unit's waiting room, and then back at the uncharacteristically quiet woman before him. The clock read three in the morning. The woman, Martha Rodgers, grasped a coffee for him in her hands.

_Her_ hands.

They were so pale lately. And thin, too. Not that he took any special notice…

At least, that is what he told himself.

"Thank you," He could not help but feel a slight smile tug on his lips. He made a mental note that it was not just because she was with him there, but rather, she gave him comfort. But then the next question would be: Why is she comforting?

Jim Beckett buried the answer.

She collapsed in the seat next to him and sighed. Then, he watched as she smiled; slowly, mournfully, but she smiled nonetheless. It was one of those rare smiles that embodied every happiness in the world, even if she didn't feel it. She merely wanted _him _to feel.

"Kiddo, to be in love is such a confusing thing."

Jim Beckett accidently choked down a scalding gulp of coffee. Martha chuckled and began to hit him on the back until his choking subsided.

She raised a joking eyebrow. "Breathe, Casanova. I am talking about my son and your daughter."

Through what felt like a nervousness knotting in his stomach, he found himself laughing. It was something he had not done in a hell of a long time. She rolled her eyes.

"Hey, I just choked," he said. "I have no idea what you are accusing me of."

"Mm, whatever floats your boat, kiddo."

Kiddo.

She had not stopped addressing him in this way since the second night they kept vigil at their children's' bedsides. The nickname, in a funny way, reminded him of Joanna. It reminded him of her humor, her vivaciousness towards life. Even when it turned for the worst…

"I have noticed, though," Mr. Beckett finally said, concern wrinkling the corner of his eyes. "I just worry."

"Worry?"

They had reached the point where they could cross these barriers, ask these questions. That sort of thing happened between two people who sought comfort in each other when they were told, according to prognosis, their children were supposed to be buried beneath the earth.

"I worry that she will fade on him before they could ever…" Mr. Beckett let his head fall into his hands. "I just…it's the hardest thing to lose a…somebody you love. I don't want your son to pick up the pieces and—"

"Don't say that. Kate has a brilliant head on her shoulders. She is a fighter in her calling—"

But then his voice interrupted hers. It came out injured. "This is not the first time Katie was seriously hurt as a detective. It…it won't be her last."

Martha's optimism seemed to fail. He knew because her eyes lost their luster. Their life vanished.

"She was shot before. She was stabbed before. Each time a part of me dies when I think she will."

She placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Maybe things will be different now, Jim." He turned away from her until she moved his face to look at her. "You can't write off things off. That lets them win; those people that already take so much when they steal life. You listen to me when I say that things will get better. You might doubt it, but they will."

"They won't. Her job won't change."

"You have to be _positive._"

"Positivity does not bring back those who are six feet under."

"It helps you cherish them if they do instead of holding on with a bitter heart."

"Martha!" He stood from his chair, angry with himself, angry for raising his voice at her, but he continued. "Katie _dies_ every night in my dreams!"

Martha stood. "Don't you think I dread turning on the news? Don't you imagine I get sick hearing about a shooting because it could be my son every damned time I turn on the television!"

"Martha, please listen to me…"

"No, you listen to me," her face was closing in near his. Jim could feel the heat of her breath. "I can't get sick when he leaves. I have to pretend to watch the news without fear. You know why? This is not about my son's research of your daughter anymore. For him to stick around all of this time for anything, it means this is something so much more." Martha's eyes burned with emotion. "Jim Beckett, you may not see it, you may not want to see it, but my son loves your daughter."

"Martha, I…" He tried to pull her back, but she began to walk away.

"And when you love somebody," she said, her face wavering in the doorway, "even when you think you are beginning to love somebody, you tell them what you honestly think."

She slammed the door, leaving the echo of her footsteps down the hallway.

[][][]

Light shifted in through the hospital room windows.

It danced on Castle's face.

Kate turned to look at him in the bed. He made a muffled noise when she turned, his grip on her loosened, but he did not wake. For a moment, a healing second, the world was still.

She was free to be lost in him.

When she was sure Castle was in deep sleep, she let her hands wander to his face. Kate closed her eyes. She could feel his breath on her mouth as their foreheads touched.

Then, she opened her eyes.

As she pulled her forehead away from his, he let out a slight sigh of discontent, and then Kate came back to place a kiss on his forehead. She pulled away smiling. What had happened would be a memory that he would never know. But then, somewhere deep within herself, she wished he had been awake. What she had done was like crying in the rain. An action blanketed in secrecy.

She whispered to him then what she had been saying each night of her tortured nightmares.

"_I want to be with you."_

"Couldn't wait to get in bed with him?"

Gina sat in a chair beside Castle's bedside, staring at the detective. Her blue eyes flickered with palpable envy. She must have come there right before Kate woke up because her coffee was still steaming in her hands. Kate flinched in the bed. Gina watched as the author weakly wrapped his arms tighter around Kate's waist, oblivious to the heated conflict rising outside his drug-induced sleep.

"We are going to talk outside," Gina said, removing Castle's limp hand from her body. "It's very important."

Kate hesitantly followed in her wake.

[][][]

Josh felt her lips delve across his and he smiled.

"So," he said between lustful kisses, "you ever going to tell me who you are?"

The woman with short black hair merely smiled. She loved the taste of wine on his lips. Getting the medical resources you need is really, really easy when you find a dumped lover really, really drunk.

Miss Harrison clung to a case with all of the medical equipment she would need to put the finishing healing touches on her own gunshot wound. Also included was what she needed to stop hearts that should have ceased to beat long ago.

The serial killer bit at his earlobe before pressing her lips to his once more.

_The stupid bastard_, she thought. She watched him melt under her touch, her kisses and she felt nothing. She only reveled the feeling of control. She loved to be like the rock thrown into the ocean that caused waves to ripple; not the waves that traveled in tumult.

"Did you like that picture I sent you of Kate and the writer?" she said, combing through her messy hair after their make-out.

"Picture?" Confusion spread on his brow.

_Drunk as hell,_ she noted to herself. _Good. _

"You won't remember this tomorrow," she said, lowering his staggering body into a chair.

"Oh I will, I really, really will…"

His head flopped on his desk and he passed out before he could say anymore. Miss Harrison chuckled before she quietly closed the door and headed down the cardiac unit hallway.

The gun she felt in her pocket was as cold as ice.

Hopefully, she thought, as cold as they soon would be.

[][][]

"Look what we have here." Gina gave Kate Beckett a glance-over and scowled. "The prodigal returns. And this took over two weeks? Who do you think put themselves together and was at his should-be death bed?" She pointed forcefully to herself. "The woman he dumped for _you._"

Kate's breath hitched in her throat. Castle never told her that he broke off things with Gina. Not that it stopped their inevitable collision course, though…

"I—"

"Let me tell you this, detective," she said, her index finger hovering to the detective's face. "You think he loves you, it feels like he loves you, but he doesn't. I am telling you this because I would know."

She watched as the detective's world, held by a small hope, crashed around her. Kate would not have a show if it weren't for her eyes.

"He loves the _idea_ of you. He never loved you."

"No."

The detective turned away from her.

"Beckett, he loved my idea, he loved the idea of Meredith, but when it came down to actually loving something more than an idea, he will leave you in ruins. You have trouble with your life now? Imagine trying to be a homicide detective with the attention that comes to you with being Richard Castle's lover. That would take you down."

"Please, I—"

"Beckett," Gina said, patting her on the back. "Don't get upset. It won't matter. You won't live up to his dream of you, anyway."

[][][]

"Ka-Detective Beckett left?"

His eyes instantly filled with worry, she noticed, as he watched Kate disappear out of sight and down the hospital hallway. Gina sat by his bedside.

"She left."

"Why?" he looked at her desperately, "Did she say anything?"

Gina fumed. "Richard Castle, she has things to do, people to see, cases to probably run. Do you think that time always stops for you?"

He said nothing.

"I see you could not wait to share a bed with her." Her words were bitter, sharp. "And all this time I have been waiting by your bedside, driving your mother and daughter around, dealing with the press, the calls, the rumors. Not her. And, _you_ ask _me _where is Kate Beckett."

"She was stabbed, Gina. Stabbed! Do I have to explain?"

"Yes, I think you do. What the hell are you thinking lately, Richard Castle? You almost got yourself killed over her. And do you care about your daughter, your mother, me? No. All you care about it that muse of yours and you know as well as I do that you are caught up in a fantasy. Don't you see it? You don't love her. You love her idea."

He cringed. "How in the hell can you say that?"

"She just walked out and left you because you are taking her world down so goddamned fast!"

Gina's lie, however untrue, stung the writer. For a moment the only noise coming from the room was their heavy breathing.

"Look, you have fucked up with relationships in the past, but this is the worst. You are risking everything for nothing. She's happy without you."

"We—"

"If she loved you," Gina said, cutting him off, "she would have been with you _years_ ago. Believe me, she is happy."

[][][]

With a heaving sigh, Kate Beckett opened her closet, only to quickly shut it again.

But, when she opened her eyes, the scarlet fabric was caught in the door.

The lavish design of the dress Castle gave her over two years ago glistened in the low lighting of her apartment. With a deep breath, she touched the fabric, allowing her hands to trace the intricate patterns of stitching and beads.

For a moment, only a moment, she closed her eyes.

There she was at the dinner auction and his arms were around her. But this time, she was not hesitant to his touch, she held him closer as if he were to vanish. Then he smiled back at her. She could tell because she could feel his lips upturn against her ear.

If only, in her mind.

With a forceful shove, she opened the closet door. The light caught on the dress.

"Katie, are you ready, sweetheart?"

She jumped. "Dad, I am fine. I have the things I need for the…" she gulped down the rest "…the house."

Two words.

Safe. House.

Put them together and they were poison to Kate Beckett.

She did not want to say them because it was almost like a bitter declaration of defeat on her tongue. Kate fought earlier with Montgomery that morning and he decided that since threats continued, she would be sent to a safe house.

He removed her from her mother's case completely.

As she glanced at her father's eyes, she noted that they were bloodshot and looked…empty.

"Dad, what happened?"

"Nothing, nothing," he said, brushing off his brawl with Martha. "When you are packed, I'll be waiting to drive you."

She nodded; her face downcast to the floor.

[][][]

A soft snow fell across the stoop outside Castle's apartment, where he stood waiting for them. He almost looked like he was trapped in a snow globe there with the pallid snowflakes falling against a smoothed backdrop of black. His face was tranquil, she noticed, and filled with a bit of the wonderment of a child. In an amusing way the adult looked like he was watching his first snowfall as a kid. But then Kate thought to herself, _He's looking that way at the snow because he never thought he would see it again. _It reminded Kate of her aunt who died of cancer. Kate clasped her pale hand as she took her wheelchair out into the snow she so desperately wanted to see.

Her aunt died smiling.

Mr. Beckett quickly stopped his car and turned to his daughter and gave her a slow, sad glance.

"I am so sorry," he said. "I know things have been rocky, but they told me I'll be staying with Martha and Alexis to make the police watch of us easier. You need to stay with Castle at the safe house, so I am driving you both out. As you've noticed, he has been omitted from the hospital."

She merely nodded, for what she thought about the matter would not change the way things worked themselves out. Orders were orders. She clambered out of the car.

Kate took Castle's suitcase without a word, putting it into the trunk. With a grimace, he saw her shirt go up a bit to reveal the scarred flesh of her side. For a moment, almost forgetting he was watching her, she flinched at the ache that ran across the stretched stitches.

Kate clasped her eyes shut in pain.

He reached out to touch her then; his fingers tracing the wound. But then they traveled, still under her shirt, to her side where an old wound rest. This he had not seen, nor felt before. She was stabbed before this attempt on her life. And she never told him…

Kate turned, staring at him. Breathless. When she called his name it was a mere flutter of breath.

"Rick…"

His hand left her abdomen.

"I am so sorry," he said. And he truly was. His heart plunged at the weight she carried, and at the emotional pain Gina said he caused her. "I didn't know—"

She let out a breath in the cold night air. It was a phantom before her. "Some things cannot be told. Rather, you carry them."

That was when she noticed his hands were holding her arms. His warm breath came to her face. "You don't have to carry them."

"I do." She looked down at his hands on her arms. She hated herself immediately for it, because he took it as a silent request to cease his light hold on her.

His eyes flickered in the darkness. "One day, let them go."

"I will."

"Kate…trust. Somebody could steal your pain away. You don't have to do this alone, you—"

But then her lips claimed his. Silencing his doubts. Silencing his fears. She kissed him with urgency now; he sensed it in his body weakening to the passion that poured out of her. Her lips then parted for him to kiss her back, his tongue dancing in the recess of her mouth. His hands pulled desperately at her face and flew through her hair.

Their bodies were dancing to each other's silent need.

She then turned the tables on him and his back went into a streetlamp pole. Her body was pressed against his as she kissed him even deeper. Castle moaned softly. He felt himself slipping under when she stopped.

Her lips slowly parted from his.

She smiled at him in the glowing darkness of what was now a snowstorm. For a moment they watched the effect they had on each other; the way they both fought for breath, still lingering in their lover's arms.

Kate was glad the back window of her father's car was blanketed in snow.

Or, so she thought…

[][][]

Miss Harrison ran down the uniform white-plastered hallways of the prison, her heart thudding against her chest like a time bomb ready to go off at any moment. She had less than two minutes to get in and out, she knew that, and the time limit preyed upon her.

But, with her father being a serial killer, this panicked rush was not anything new.

Her crew took out the guards.

Miss Harrison was dressed as a nurse that would come to the prison for inmate checkups. She had obtained the necessary equipment under the nose particular drunken man at the hospital. Now her father was being held in a high security cell for murder, but not for the murder of Joanna Beckett. As of yet he was not found guilty for that.

"Hello dad," she said, grasping her father's hands through his the cell bars.

He simply grinned. Mr. Harrison's green eyes glinted in the light. "I knew you would come."

She sprang the lock with her nurse's key- in, when a guard seemed to take special notice in her. She pulled her dad out and placed him behind her. Her gun was cold against her back.

"It's a nice night, isn't it, sir?" Miss Harrison said, making small talk as she meandered closer to him.

He raised an eyebrow. "It is. I was hoping to get off duty early to see my family. We have little ones and you know how that is. By the way, you a new nurse here?"

"Yes," she said.

"Well," he motioned to the doorway. "I would keep Mr. Harrison in close confines of this area because he is a high security inmate."

"I had specific orders to take him to the next station for care."

The man raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so."

Miss Harrison's bullet flew through the guard's head. His nerve endings fired out before his body crashed into the pavement.

Her dad smiled savagely. "Well, he got off shift early."

[][][]

Broken hearts.

For most people who have said they have experienced this, they rarely have felt the tumult of lost love. Lost love is more than brokenness, it is having your heart smashed into thousands of pieces and trampled upon, time and time again.

Their death is the shattering.

Revisiting the memories is the smashing of the pieces.

It happens whenever you think about them. It could be a silly thing brings up their painful memory, it haunts like a cancer that comes back to claim its victim.

Martha knew Jim Beckett's heart was not broken. It was smashed.

As she waited for him to return to the loft to join her and Alexis, she flipped on the television. Now, without anybody around, she did not have to pretend not to be scared. Her hands trembled as she turned to the news. Besides worrying about her family, and Kate, she was worried about Jim.

A newsman with gelled, jet-black hair gripped a microphone as he stood outside of the jail.

"Please be on the lookout in the downtown New York area for a Caucasian, silver-haired male in his sixties. Sources have said that the city's prison break was aided by Mr. Harrison's associates and sources from inside the jail have said that this is connected with a recent reopening murder case of Joanna Beckett, mother of one of the city's top homicide detectives. "

The screen flashed large red lettered ticker-tape: PRISON BREAK…ALLEGED SERIAL KILLER NO LONGER BEHIND BARS...

The clips transitioned to a press conference, where Roy Montgomery stood. He almost looked like he was about to fall over with the mad press rush around him.

"Is Mr. Harrison a threat to the general public?"

"How did he escape?"

The last question struck him and tore at his very core:

"Was Mr. Harrison Joanna Beckett's killer? We have reason to believe that this new investigation into him is a farce."

He stood there for a moment and the captain stared at the man who asked the question and at the swirling press storm around him. He felt his hands trembling.

"Well," he said into the microphone, addressing the crowds. "Think what you wish, but we search for the truth. The guard who was shot tonight, John Thomson, had words carved into his chest with a knife by his killer after he was shot. He died for a cause, and don't you dare dishonor that."

"What did it say, sir?" The journalist was timid now.

"' It read: _For Joanna_,'" he said, pushing them all away as he left the investigation in a black SUV. "Don't you tell _me_ we wrongly accused this man."

As fast as she could reach the phone, Martha called Jim.

Her breath hitched when she heard the deadpanned ringing instead of his voice on the other end.

[][][]

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**-Holy Batman! There are many relationships deepening/fraying/murders gaining wind. I wrote this almost two weeks ago and finally got around to editing/posting. (I had a stressful past couple of days.) I hate to think I am losing any of you. I love your feedback, and I hope this story still meets the bar. Does it? Please tell me. :)**


	6. The Things We Have Kept Secret

**Now, Castle and Beckett are staying at the safe house and Mr. Harrison, orchestrator of Joanna's death, is freed from prison. Things are about to smolder. How? Stay tuned.-Your unwavering readership is incredibly meaningful to me. –**_**M**_**-**

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_Chapter Six: The Things We Have Kept Secret_

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Fiery passion.

Jim Beckett felt his breath catch at the memory of them, the way his daughter and the author had kissed each other so fervently in the swirling snow and darkness. Jim had driven down the pitch-black rural road on the way back from dropping off Kate and Castle at the safe house with the memory painted fresh in his mind.

He accidently saw them like this when glancing into his side mirror. Then he knew what had been taking so long with the luggage. One could definitely say their luggage was dropped in the process.

His eyes had traced the way they came together, their mouths clashing with a hunger, but, a silent savoring. Their eyes filled with a desire, yet, understanding. It was not one wanting one more than the other. To Jim, he surprisingly found it looked so natural, so right, yet so broken in these unfolding events. What he saw was a mutual. A shared respect and consuming need for another in life.

"_I'm always here for you,"_ Jim watched the author whisper to his daughter, pulling her into an embrace. Castle pressed his lips her forehead then, gently, like Jim used to do every night before she went to bed. He was pained when they broke and she looked at him, tracing his jaw line as if to say, _"You are alive…" _yet not believing it.

Profound feelings were transpired in pure silence between them.

_Castle was truly here for her_, Jim thought. _But even as her father, was I?_ He remembered a blur of events surrounding Joanna's funeral. All he could remember through his drunkenness was stumbling down the aisle of the small church with his ghastly thin daughter holding him up. Ever since that moment he felt he was an observer of his daughter's life, a burden for her, not a father.

But he wanted to mend the wounds of time, the horrors he made her live through with his alcohol abuse. Maybe, just maybe, their relationship would never get close to mending. This was his greatest fear he battled, and, his most daunting demon, deeper and darker than any addiction.

But now the memory faded as Jim stood before his wife's murderer. A knife was clasped in Mr. Harrison's hand. His green eyes glinted almost brighter than his weapon in the moonlight.

"_Tell me_ what safe house you drove the detective and the goddamned author to."

As the enraged serial killer pulled on the lapel of his jacket, Jim remembered he did not even stand a chance against their roadside ambush when driving back to the loft. Mr. Harrison's men came too quickly, shooting rounds at his car's tires, and at his car, making it come to a screeching halt in snow obscured street. He was then bound and taken to this warehouse. Right before he was pulled from his car however, he picked up a call from Martha, only to be able to explain his plight and say nothing more.

The last thing he heard was her scream. It was the call of his name.

Mr. Harrison snapped Jim back into reality by striking him violently across the face. "No you listen to me. _Remember_ your wife? I am sure as hell not afraid to kill you as I wait for your answer."

He lifted his knife. Jim thrashed against his bondage uselessly.

_Kate, I am going to be your father now,_ he thought. _Forgive me…_

"I will never tell you," Jim Beckett replied.

The knife plunged. He screamed as it ripped into his shoulder.

[][][]

Hours before, after Jim had dropped them off, Kate Beckett noticed the safe house appeared to be more like a ransacked old motel. But, having been there times before, she did not question its validity.

"This place is booked to the max, detective," a young woman said as she walked them to the remaining space at the safe house. "Well, we house few people, but you know what I mean."

This young woman, named Nancy, pulled her clipboard out and passed by a guard who gave her a wink. She dismissed it with a professional air that cracked all too easily. "I don't know when Mark will grow up," Nancy said, putting on a stern face that quickly slipped into a smile.

"They're totally going out," Castle mouthed.

Kate stifled back a chuckle when Nancy turned around.

"Well then," she said, raising a testing eyebrow. "You two being a couple, I don't think you would mind sharing the last room we have left."

Kate's eyes widened.

Nancy grinned devilishly at Castle and Beckett as they continued to clamber down the halls to their room. "You are _so_ a couple. I mean, you've been secretly been giving each other the lovey-dovey face since I've been showing you two around."

Nancy buried her head into her clipboard and, looking at Beckett's expression, walked ahead of them to avoid conflict.

Castle mouthed words behind her back, a one-sided smirk creeping up his face, "Ew, 'lovey-dovey'? That phrase…"

Kate nodded, "…is disgusting…"

"…and sounds like a Care Bear name," he said. Kate raised a questioning eyebrow and he added, "Alexis."

"Excuse me." Nancy turned to see the snickering author fail to hide his amusement when Mark ended up walking past all of them in the hallway for the second time, giving Nancy a not-so subdued glance over as he passed. Nancy blushed. "_Fine,_ we are dating, now will you let me do my job?"

"Certainly," Castle agreed, but his serious face did not last too long.

Nancy rolled her eyes and turned to Kate. "Good luck living with him for however long you're here, detective."

She directed them to a cramped room at the end of the hallway.

"One room," Castle observed aloud.

"And one small bed in the corner," Nancy said in a monotone. "Get used to it. We aren't a hotel."

[][][]

"For the last time, Jim Beckett," Mr. Harrison said, brining a knife up to his neck. "What safe house did you drive them to?"

The shimmering knife caught the blood dripping from Jim's nose; a result of Mr. Harrison's punch to his face. Jim Beckett gasped as Mr. Harrison let the side of a steel knife trail down his neck. The knife did not pierce his skin, but the frigid metal sent shivers down his spine. In the corner of his eye, Jim noticed a girl who shared Mr. Harrison's sharp, almost chiseled face.

It must have been his daughter.

"Miss Harrison?" Jim asked, quietly. Her head shot up immediately. "What do you get from all of this?"

She pressed her lips into a fine, pale line, distractedly tracing the serpent tattoo that crept up her neck with her fingers.

"Nice try, Jim," she said halfheartedly, looking down to the concrete floor. "Nice try."

[][][]

A little while after Kate and Castle entered their room, Kate watched him sit on the bed and pull out his phone. Meanwhile, she quietly resolved to unpack some of her things. In a hushed voice, he talked to Alexis, who told Castle she was in her room and Martha was immersed in the news. The author sighed.

"Pumpkin, sometimes it is better not to watch those things unfold." He listened as Alexis told him she agreed. "So, honey, I would sit her down. Talk. Watch a movie with her, or pull out her favorite music." He chuckled softly. "If you feel adventurous, let her cook. Just anything to get her away from…things."

"I will." He heard the teen laugh over the phone. "Just totally not the cooking part…"

Her father then told her to check on her grandmother, make sure Jim was coming home, and to be safe.

"I love you," he said.

When Kate turned around to glimpse at him, she noticed he was absentmindedly watching her as he spoke those words. He quickly averted his gaze to the floor when he realized the situation he had created.

"I, uh…bye, pumpkin." He ended the call a bit awkwardly, turning to Beckett. "I feel better. Alexis and mom are good, your dad is on his way over, and we are safe, too."

Beckett said nothing for some time, biting the edge of her lip as her face froze. "Your family, they're in harm's way and—"

"They're safe," Castle reassured her. "Roy has the best out there. I have faith in those people. Trust. You have to believe, you have to know that none of this is your fault."

"That's not true," she whispered, turning away from him.

"Kate—"

"No, I will not agree with you on this."

"But you need to," he pleaded. "You need to see that what they do is not in your control, your intention."

"But, I could prevent this!" the detective countered, not meaning to shout at him, but it came with her buried frustration flying to the surface. "I should be out now, protecting our families, but I am here, where I can do nothing. Absolutely _nothing_."

"It's for the best." He walked to where she stood. "There'd be more danger if we're around them, being the central targets."

"But look, we are targets because of me. Because I let you get involved. _You_ should have been dead. I should have been dead."

He sighed, stepping towards her. "We are alive, now, in this very moment. _This_ is what matters."

"How could you say that when you could have been dead? Did that not show you anything?" The rest came out in a pained murmur. "I…I felt your pulse fade under my own hand." Her breath was heated against his face as her eyes darkened. "You don't even see it. What happens to you, your family, it is all in my hands and I will never forgive myself if…"

He placed his pointer finger lightly on her lips. Her words fell, not able to come out, dying on her tongue. His hand traced her jaw line slowly. _"Kate, we're alive,"_ he said softly, and then wrapped her into an embrace and she silently buried her head into his shoulder. His warm breath hummed in her ear.

Even with his words, his living breath against her skin, she still doubted everything as a hopeless illusion.

She could not even stop her words.

_"Prove it,"_ she whispered.

His embrace ended, but he looked at her then, _through_ her. Kate felt his hot breath patter on her skin as he moved closer to her. She reached out then, touching the side of his face in beckoning. Her neck arched slightly in silent invitation. There did not need to be darkness around them here. He came behind her, his hands wandering to her waist. Kate murmured softly as his kisses started slowly at the base of her neck.

She breathed, reveling in the sensation.

This was not recovering from grief together. This was two irrevocably broken people teaching each other how to live again or, maybe for the first time.

Her cold skin was set ablaze.

[][][]

It felt like fire burned in his veins.

Mr. Harrison struck Jim across the face again, sending a bitter sting crawling through his flesh. He would not have Jim talking to his daughter like that. He knew brainwashing when he heard it.

"I am a father, too," Jim said, wheezing back the pain. He focused his hazy sight of vision on Miss Harrison. "But, I love my daughter. I want the best for her even though I fail more often than do any good. But, I am human, and because of that, I love the only way my crooked human heart can…imperfectly."

Miss Harrison stared at him with no flicker of emotion whatsoever.

Mr. Harrison then shoved Jim's chair, in which he was bound, viciously into the wall. The back of his head made contact with concrete. Kate's father cried out in pain until Mr. Harrison's hands went for his throat. His cries were silenced. Jim's face turned red, but then began to pale into a bluish hue.

"Tell me where they are!" Mr. Harrison shouted. His nostrils flared.

Jim let out a weak gasp as his pained eyes stared up at the ceiling. The serial killer's grip was so tight and he felt like he was slipping under to the darkness around him. But then the feeling stopped when a pale hand moved the serial killer away from him. It was Miss Harrison.

"Let me take it from here." Miss Harrison stepped in for her enraged father. "Mr. Beckett, there is no use in killing you. But don't worry. Your daughter will be sure to come here looking for you."

"You wouldn't dare," Jim warned; his breath a raspy murmur.

"Jim, Jim, Jim," Miss Harrison said, touching the side of his sweaty face in mock pity. "Like you said, we are human. And with these crooked hearts we love, and fall down. But remember, we all run cold one day. Your day…well, it might as well be today."

[][][]

Kate Beckett felt a heat course through her body as Castle's kisses continued down her neck. With his mouth, he set her flesh afire that should have been stiffened by death. When his kisses wandered to her collar bone, she let out a small gasp at the sensation he sent riveting throughout her body.

"_Rick…"_

His name was not a plea. It was a brazen need.

In a blur of motion Castle's back was planted into the wall of the small room. Kate began her work, her kisses scaling up his neck, making her way to his lips. He lightly pulled her face up then, needing her, letting their mouths clash together. Pinned against the wall and her body, a heated rush poured through Castle. Kate moaned as he deepened the kiss. His jacket fell to the floor in a darkened blur of fabric. His hands flew through her hair and then fell to her hips to support her from falling.

But they did fall. They fell onto the bed, still kissing one another, hands roaming. As they fell into each other's arms though, Castle inadvertently grimaced at the pain that shot across his stitches.

"_I…don't want to hurt you,"_ she whispered. But she was silenced as his lips flew to hers softly and he pulled her body against his. His kiss made her melt. Her hands flew through his hair. In that moment, they were so alive. She could feel the heat from his face; he could feel the thrash of her tongue, the flutter of his stomach at her touch…

That was when there was a steady knock on their door.

[][][]

"Gram!"

Alexis flew into the kitchen where her grandmother stood, completely immobile. Martha had dropped the phone and her arms clung to the kitchen counter.

"I…I need to sit."

Alexis lowered her grandmother to the floor and sat beside her, clasping her hand. She noticed her grandmother's tears staining her bloodshot eyes. Martha was pulled into an embrace by Alexis and her hands rubbed up and down her back. With a shiver, Martha noticed that Alexis was also trembling. She knew something was terribly wrong.

"He…he…" Her voice could not come through her throat that tightened in shock, in grief. "They got him."

"Gram, who?" Alexis held her Martha's frenzied stare; her panic now matched her grandmother's.

"Jim…and they're out for your father and Kate. They are going to be…"

With tears fighting at the in the corner of her eyes, and sheer fear coursing through her body, Alexis ran into the other room and picked up the phone with a trembling hand. But then, the phone fell from her grasp, clattering onto the hardwood floor. For when she heard her grandmother scream, she turned to see a man with dark hair mere inches from her, dressed in black. A trained assassin of Mr. Harrison, he was swift to move. Like fluid, like a ghost.

"Our time is fleeting," he said, running a cold hand down Alexis' milk-white face.

Alexis' body turned rigid. Over the man's shoulder, Martha was unconscious on the floor. Walking backwards, Alexis slipped her hand into the kitchen drawer.

Within a moment, she could feel the cold blade of her knife behind her back as she walked forward.

[][][]

The safe house keeper, Nancy, sat across from Rick and Kate at the dinner table. Her babble about safe house protocol seemed to fade away with their thoughts. In annoyance, Nancy passed a hand over the author's face and he quickly bolted upright in his chair, faking attentiveness.

"Sorry," he muttered. Castle caught Kate's eyes again before she focused her gaze to the tabletop.

Meanwhile, Kate was caught in her own thoughts. She had this burning desire to be with Castle and the void of unknowns it created scared her. What if he was the man Gina warned about? What if, after finally unraveling the mystery of her, he would be bored? What if he merely loved the mystery of her idea? What if this sudden need for each other was merely getting caught in the torrents of grief?

Not to mention, she had darkened secrets. They were scattered and hidden in her heart, like it was a murky recess for her sufferings. Her secrets were also scarred into her body. Every scar had a story, a memory that was indelibly permanent. And what she had never told Castle, or anybody for that matter, was utterly horrifying. She was never one to pass on burdens to others. She sheltered the haunting truth. Only her father knew the lightened framework of the stories. Well, that was because he had to.

She wondered what if safe house worker had not knocked on the door, pulling them out of their burning need for each other, stopping the inevitable passion. She knew she would have to open up the darkest years of her life to him, the times when she received those scars on her body, past markers of her first years on the force. The scars whispered unspeakable stories.

Other men would gaze on lustfully at her body. Scars, what were they to them? In honesty, nothing. He would ask, though. This she was sure of. He already did when he felt the old scar that ran up her abdomen. He needed her; his softened eyes clouded by a mixture of grief and longing were presently proof of that.

More than that, though, he also needed to _know_ her, her story.

He knew her to be beautifully broken; her real story was buried deep within herself. It was a harbored secret, something he only hoped she would be able to allow him to know, to let him in, to remain a constant in her life.

Secrets.

They are the obscured fibers of our life's weavings, simultaneously pulling us away from others and keeping us close; the glue and division of the humankind.

Secrets are the world's darkest contradiction.

That is, looking at the heart from the outside in. The one who holds the secret is frayed, like one's image in a shattered mirror. Shamed, sorrowed, sullen; the secret keeper stands. They smile then, for their reflection in the fragmented glass is somebody they can no longer see.

Or at least, think they no longer are.

Kate inhaled sharply, and then exhaled, concentrating purely on the act of her own breathing for empty comfort. From the corner of her eyes, she noted that the author watched her submersed in the thoughts flooding her mind. Kate did not know that she would look back on this moment, finding her problems inconsequential to the unspeakable darkness that would soon envelop them. But in that moment, she did recognize the beginnings of a frayed end. The author must have noticed, for under the secrecy of the table, he clasped the detective's hand.

She took a deepened breath, clasping his hand tighter.

When they left, she tried to ignore him at first. It didn't last. They stumbled in the darkened halls together, kissing each other fiercely as they made way to their room, shutting the door behind them.

Only the pale moonlight streamed through the room.

Now, like before, one of them was up against the wall, but it was her this time. Her body was pressed between the wall and him. Their mouths locked in passion, in this drive that was so much greater than their control, bringing them under. He deepened the kiss. She whimpered in pleasure. Tongues clashed. Teeth nipped. Hands set skin afire.

The way he kissed her drove her crazy, wanting to meet his passion equally with her own. But his hands were almost merciless in sending her under. They slid up her shirt while they kissed, then they fell down her abdomen. He stopped when he felt the scars under his fingers.

He did not just want her. He wanted to _know_ her, all of her, even the darkness.

"_Kate?" _he whispered, questioning the scars while feathering her eyelids, forehead, and cheek with light kisses.

Her breath still hitched at the simplest flicker of his lips on her skin, but now she pulled away from him. Her darkness, her secrets; they were still buried in her heart.

His reply to her silence was a hum in her ear, a hushed prayer: "_Trust me."_

And so she did. Her shirt fell to the floor in darkened ebony; a ghost descending to the floor. Her scars under the brim of her short tank caught in the moonlight. Her lips flickered, as if to let the secrets of her past free from them, but the words fell lifeless as she stared up at his broken face. He reached out. He touched her.

His hand held hers tightly.

* * *

**I would like to thank you for the passion you inspire me to drive into the page. It is a bit darkened at times, and yet, we are still here. (Not to mention my chapters get LONG. Hopefully, not in a bad way.) Your feedback is a world of constructive resource for me. For that, my appreciation comes beyond words. I _miss _your feedback. Ideas? Continue this? I see the light coming for the characters...not the bad light. I would love your honest opinion. Critique or feedback. Nothing is more frustrating than no feedback, my friend.**


	7. The Things That Strip Us Bare

**Kate was about to unravel some unknowns about her unnerving past to Castle. (You know, months ago when I updated this *offers apologetic tip of hat*). Meanwhile, the serial killers that were responsible for the orchestration of Joanna Beckett's murder have caught up with Martha and Alexis…**

* * *

_Chapter Seven: The Things That Strip Us Bare _

* * *

It was the same nightmare every time the author's eyes had closed and he slipped into the darkness.

He reached out to touch her, but the shadows would close in. He would hear Kate scream. He would sense the tug of her hand, the feeling of her lips on his, the clash of their teeth, then something so tender, so raw as her lips would meet his in a final goodbye.

He could not see her. He could taste tears.

Then she was pulled away. No matter how much he fought, screamed out in rage, or begged, they always took the detective, letting her slip with them into the darkness.

He would hear the shouting of her mother's killer, something about how she wasted her life searching for the truth when there was none in the world. The slash of his knife.

Then silence….silence…silence…

And then, Castle would awake, sweat drenched with bloodshot eyes. He was too numb to wipe the tears away. He did not care if Kate woke up and saw him like this. There was no pretending. Not anymore.

Hours before he forced himself into some sleep, she opened up her first years on the force to him. He silently listened, letting her words pour over him; he was drowning in everything he did not know about her. It made him truly wonder if he was as close to her as he thought, as he stood awake in the safe house, lighting a candle by their bedside.

She was asleep, but it was not a peaceful rest. He wondered if she was having dreams like his. Kate murmured something in her sleep that was inaudible to the writer, but he stroked her forehead softly, clambering ever so lightly and closer to her on the bed. He watched her face come to a blissful calm.

"_Will I ever know you? All of you?"_ the author whispered in her ear.

He kissed her forehead slowly, relishing her skin under his lips.

"_Never leave me," _he pleaded.

Castle felt Kate's breath run across his face. Then, and only then, was he able to close his eyes.

Sometimes, only knowing the fact that you love somebody deeply is enough to make it through the darkest nights.

[][][]

Fear.

It comes, striking, like a flash of red in the back of the mind; consuming, like fire. You don't know how it originates, or why sometimes, but once it catches to your mind, it is nearly unquenchable.

Alexis bit back a scream that threatened to pour from her lips as her frozen face caught in the moonlight drifting through the kitchen window of the loft. Her attacker stood before her mercilessly, his mouth forming into a sharp edged line as he drew closer to Alexis.

Last chances.

Her attacker edged even closer. Alexis held her knife tighter in her hand, hiding it behind her back. She had a flash of a crisp memory; her father telling her not to be worried, remembering him catching her in his arms when she stumbled and fell at the park. Is this what happens when you die? You see the things that have, and always will matter?

"You d-don't have to do this," she said, lips trembling against her will.

"I believe I do," said Mr. Harrison's hit man.

When she closed her eyes, Alexis prepared herself for what she was about to do, but when she opened them, she heard a large crash on the apartment door.

The serial killer's eyes narrowed.

"This is the way it ends," he whispered.

It was time for her to go.

A shot was fired.

Eyes rolled back as a body fell.

This time, the flash of red was blood.

[][][]

Kate woke up in the safe house bed the next morning to find Castle was not there.

Her hand reached to feel the side next to her and it was still filled with his warmth. She pulled herself up, her black sweats and hoodie still offering heat from the cold world outside the bed. She walked to the door of their room and found a small note taped to it:

_Breakfast, my lady?_

She bit back a grin and headed out to the small kitchen at the end of the hallway. As she walked, she felt a burning flutter from the words he had spoken to her that past night, the first night they stayed together in the safe house.

Serenity.

After he saw the scars that crept up her abdomen that night, he took her hands, and they both lowered her shirt to hide the scars. He led her into the bed. His arms wrapped around her as she spoke of her earliest years on the force; the blinded drive that almost cost her life so many times.

He had merely listened as her darkened tales poured ever so honestly in the room. His breath was a warming patter in her ear. Castle noticed that as she spoke, her voice was so small. With a sinking sensation, he felt he was probably the first person to hear these glimpses of her past, but he could never be sure.

He felt a hollowed ache for what she had to carry inside all of these years, the horror that she had to succumb to in her life. Yet, when she spoke, there was no self pity. After she finished, she breathed an aggrieved sigh that the stories had passed her lips. Their haunting memories still rigid within her, but whispers of pain escaped through her lips.

That was when she turned to face him on the bed in the darkness of the room; she could feel the heat of his steady breath against her mouth.

His reply to her darkened past was a mere flutter of a breathless whisper:

"_I love you."_

[][][]

Martha sat on the sofa, head propped up with pillows, Alexis applying an ice pack to her head.

"Still smarts," Martha offered feebly. "But I'm a kicker."

"You got that, Mrs. R." Esposito said, patting her on the shoulder from where he sat in a chair across for her and Alexis on the sofa. "You guys are pretty dynamic at dealing with sticky situations. The NYPD just rolled through here and you even helped get our guy down after he was shot. Must be a family thing."

Both Alexis and Martha exchanged a weak smile.

They did not join in the optimism, and Esposito could tell.

"Mrs. R." Esposito said, taking her hand. "The forces have been looking for Jim Beckett nonstop. We just need to keep this information away from Castle and Kate. They would leave the safe house to look and…this time we can't have them doing things like that."

Martha nodded solemnly.

"_Just find him,"_ she whispered. "Kate would just—I can't even think about her dealing with this—but Jim and I, well…" Her features began to fall. "I…want him home."

[][][]

"Hey love," Castle said, not even having to look up and see who it was.

Kate, watching him cook from doorway, felt that same damn flutter she was beginning to accept instead of subdue. She then came into the small kitchen, and could see he looked so happy but yet so…nervous. His hands were trembling.

His words last night were like dipping hesitant feet into roaring waters, but Castle did not care about risk at this point. He had almost lost her to that brutal stabbing. He loved her. And, he would tell her that.

Castle could tell she was smiling through her words:

"And you knew it was me, how?"

"I just know the sound of your walk. Heels or no heels," he said, flipping a pancake, a grin coming to his face. "It's unique."

She laughed. "Somebody has been stalking me…"

"…_observing._" he defended.

When he sat across from her, she smiled, watching his slight nervousness subside. But she wanted to show him that things had not changed with his words from the last night, but they had only deepened their emotions for one another, deepened what they had been silently building all these years.

She decided, then and there across from a plate of steaming pancakes, on a simple gesture.

She reached out and clasped the hand of a man who loved her for all she was, even the darkness.

He smiled.

He no longer trembled…

…she could never remember feeling happier.

[][][]

"_Stop!_" Miss Harrison spat, her face filled with rage at her father's unceasing torture of Mr. Beckett, who was fading quickly.

"_Vera Harrison_," Her father pressed, "if you haven't noticed, I've escaped out of a goddamned prison and I need to find the two before I am found."

"Correction," Vera said. "_I_ got _you_ out of prison."

"Yah," he said, moving away from her, "and I hope to goddamned stay out."

The serial killer watched as his daughter went to where Mr. Beckett was bound to a chair, placing a towel to dry the sweat that drenched his forehead. She closed her eyes.

"You are completely oblivious, aren't you?" Mr. Harrison said, staring at her incredulously. "You know what? I still see you as that same foolish girl you were when you were little. That same little girl that was scared...always so scared..."

Vera said nothing, but continued to dry Mr. Beckett's face.

"You are going to be the reason this falls through," he said, eyes stone cold. "You're weak."

"_Shut up,"_ Vera hissed.

"No," her father said, "You will be our downfall. I can see it."

"'_Our_ downfall?'" she said, her face flickering in the low lighting of the warehouse. "We are separate people, always spinning in different orbits. If you fall, it is merely yourself you have to blame. You have set yourself on fire."

[][][]

"No sign of him, but there was a car abandoned down the road on my property," a witness said.

Lanie, Esposito, and Ryan piled into a car and drove out around the rural areas surrounding the safe house. Now, they were getting closer to the spot of Jim's abandoned car, the man pointing where it was.

"Down the road that way," he said, his arm extended. He peered into the car occupied by the NYPD trio, seeing a gun and badge on Esposito's belt, so he added. "And…I called the police about it."

Through the still snow-blanketed rural streets, the trio came upon Jim Beckett's abandoned car.

Broken windows; the first thing they noticed.

Blood on the driver's seat; the sight that threw them into a violent silence.

[][][]

Vera Harrison left her father in the warehouse and left to find Beckett and Castle.

It was no foreign idea to her what safe houses were in the area in relation to where her father's hit men had cornered Mr. Beckett. Often, when she was a teenager and assumed the role of a hit man, she had wanted to escape from her father and check into a safe house herself.

Vera had the addresses still written in a careful scrawl in her pocket from age twelve.

As her grip tightened on the steering wheel, she watched the wind blow up swirls of snow on the rural road. As it danced, memories poured into her mind. Ones she could not repress. She remembered the way her lover's lips felt on hers just over a year ago. The way they kissed each other madly in this car and made love as snow blanketed them in this safe place.

It was one of the few moments she ever felt protected in her life.

Her lover was dead now. Murdered.

"_I am going to escape from this life…" _Vera had whispered to him over a year ago.

Her words were then smothered in his kiss as he replied:

"_I would love that."_

She smiled then, their foreheads touching. _"If we both escape this last job, we are free. We can run away and disappear...start a new life…"_

As Vera presently drove down this road, she looked into the rearview mirror and with horror she saw, like a ghost, her lover staring back at her.

"I'm back, love," he said softly, his ghost eyes claiming her every attention.

[][][]

Kate Beckett was lying on the bed, her stomach almost ablaze with his kisses that tauntingly came up her abdomen, carefully avoiding her stab wounds. She felt a moan escape her lips, as his hands raised her tank slowly, his kisses ending at the base of her ribs. He felt the burning desire for her, but he knew this could not be. This was not the time.

They were both too broken.

Instead, he resorted back to their mindless games and kissed her fiercely on the lips before traveling down her neck, then down her abdomen again, but lightly kissing her wounds now, creating a blissful fire on their reddened surfaces.

"_Castle,"_ she gasped, her fingers digging into his hair.

He grinned wickedly, _"Shh, we'll get kicked out of the safe house…"_

His kisses traveled the opposite way to her pant line, which evoked the same sound from her.

She took the pillow she had clung to then and wacked him lightly on the head, laughing.

"Hey!" he said disappointedly, but his face broke into laughter. Laughter in what had been such a long time. It almost felt strange until he watched her face transform, too. Like the sun coming out during a ravaging rainstorm. She smiled.

In the depths of grief, hope can still thrive.

"_Mmm, no noises, Castle,"_ she grinned, her voice low. She pulled his body close to hers and she kissed him on the base of his neck so fiercely he gasped. _"Two can play at this game..."_

[][][]

Vera came into a twist of rural road she knew all too well.

From the gates of the cemetery, she walked further to his grave, her lover's grave. She knew the number, section, and plot by heart. In the bitter cold, she watched her breath flutter before her. Her lover's ghost followed her cautiously.

"You have not been taking your medications," he said, wrapping her into his arms when they approached his grave.

"And live without you?" Vera said softly. "You were my everything, you _are_ my everything."

He broke from her embrace. "You are my everything, but I am dead," he whispered. "Vera…you are schizophrenic. I'm not here. You know that."

She stared at him, and her frigid blue eyes darkened like a swell of flooding seas. His ghost said nothing and merely watched Vera put a red rose on his grave.

"An author did this gesture for his lover's mom," she said, glancing at the rose, then up at him.

"Beautiful gesture, love," he said quietly, pressing his nonexistent lips to her forehead.

"When are you going to come back to me?" she said then, reaching out to grab his shoulder, but feeling nothing under her fingerprints. "When are you going to come back to me so we can escape and have that family we talked about? Those little kids? Or, buy that broken-down white house you took me to, and said we'll fix it up? Or, was it all a lie?"

He gazed at her for a moment, slowly pointing to her pocket where her medication was. She knew he would not reply until she took it, so she did. But, as the pill began to dissolve in Vera Harrison's mouth, his image, her lover's image, slowly slipped away.

"When will you do these things with me?" she shouted. _"You promised!"_

His voice was a whisper across the graveyard as his face faded into what looked like thousands of small lights:

"_Never…"_

[][][]

Both Beckett and Castle had spent a majority of the day pouring through some old files the author had stolen on Mr. Harrison before they left for the safe house.

"You don't get internet in here. Figures." Castle has sighed, checking the nonexistent Wi-Fi on his phone, trying to keep updated on recent events that way. "Just great."

When they finally decided to go to bed, Castle had tried calling his daughter to see if everything was okay at home. Her reply was merely what she was told to say by the police, but in a text:

_Good, dad. Keeping Gram busy…_

She knew that she could never swindle her father by lying with her voice.

Castle sat there puzzled, wondering why his daughter decided to text back instead of picking up the call. Of course, his imagination was quick to provide painful answers. He sent her a text back:

_I want to hear you say that, pumpkin._

When she did not reply, he slipped out from the bed, slowly untangling Kate's arms from him. He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead and left the room, walking into the darkened hallways.

[][][]

"Hey, Esposito, can you call me back?"

Castle dusted off a small bench, covered with some drifted snow outside the safe house, and sat there. This way, he was out of hearing range of Kate. The last thing he wanted to do was to worry her when things could be going perfectly fine. He then called Ryan to only get the same empty ring of voicemail.

He sat in the thick darkness of another winter's night, pensively while he waited.

Everything had changed so much since this simple turn of events, he thought; especially, his relationship with Kate.

Now, he breathed in the cold night, allowing the blur of the past events come back into his mind. They both had almost died, their blood intermingling in the shooting range where they were stabbed. He remembered the first time she allowed him to hold her on that sleepless night in the hospital bed together. He was exhausted, but sleep would prove to be an emptied sensation compared to the warmth of her living body against his.

He also thought about the dizzied night they came stumbling into their safe house room, kissing each other madly. Just the memory brought a thin smile to his lips, but also, a fire. Then he heard the repeat of the words of her broken past that floated quietly into his ear, then, he heard his own words he spoke to her:

"_I love you."_

And he did. He meant it with every fiber of his being; body and soul. He had felt this for the longest time and was only able to whisper it in the night.

Why is it that we whisper things our hearts scream the loudest?

He would never know.

In the stilled silence, he only hoped, that with time, she might whisper back those same words to him in the night, in the day, whenever she was ready.

Like a parched forest, it took an ember to set his world ablaze with her. People say all fires eventually consume themselves, but this one never would. He wanted to be consumed with her, by her, for as long as his mortal life would endure.

But, with recent events, their mortal lives were looking shorter with every piece of information they uncovered on this case.

[][][]

"Castle, what's up? It's awfully late and you left."

The author was startled out of his thoughts as Kate sat next to him on the bench. Her sweater barely looked like it offered enough warmth, so he took her in under his coat.

"Just thinking…"

"About what?" Her eyes danced in the low lighting of a lamp on the safe house patio.

"Us."

"I have been, too," she said.

"I'm just so lost and…" He took her hand and she clasped his tightly.

She could see fear painted in his eyes and replied, "I don't want to lose you either, but that's not going to happen."

"Promise me?"

"I promise you."

A silence followed, as they took in each other's breaths, faces growing nearer. After a moment's hesitation, she pulled his face to hers, catching his bottom lip with her teeth. He felt himself slipping deeper into the bench, their tongues clashing readily, her hands rushing through his hair as he tried to get a handling on her waist. He felt her break the kiss and grin after she evoked a moan from him. He kissed her harder and got the same sound from her.

They broke.

Their hands still murmured through the other's hair.

In her way, Kate Beckett had given her reply to Castle's earlier words.

In time, they would be spoken.

If time would no longer be a merciless robber.

Since it was, Castle began to kiss Kate again.

[][][]

Vera Harrison sat in her car, whispering to her nonexistent lover.

"Coonan," she asked. "Why did she kill you? Why did she take you from me?"

Vera was referring to the blurred events that she understood so little about. Coonan, her lover, had been taken into questioning by the detective and writer and he came out dead, a bullet through his chest.

Vera paused for a moment, pretending to hear an answer in the chilled car. Her hands ran through her short black hair lazily as she watched Castle and Kate kissing under the pale stream of a single lamp outside the safe house. They looked so…_blissful_. That was when Vera began to clamber out of her car, parked far enough that it would take time to see her in the snow that now fell slowly from the sky.

"I pity lovers," she said coldly, putting her gun in her coat pocket and walking to meet the author and detective in the black night.

"Coonan," she asked, not even waiting for the reply. "Are you coming?"

She paused.

She pretended the deafening silence was his answer.

[][][]

Vera's arms were quick to throw Kate Beckett to the ground from the bench.

Neither of them saw her coming in the night…

Kate's lips, seconds before on Castle's, froze into a fixed line as she hit the concrete. The last thing she remembered was a whirl of black and the faint sound…the sound of Castle pleading for her life…

Then a louder noise. A flash. A scream. More darkness.

Then, the sound of her mother's voice, dying like her fading heartbeat:

"_Don't let it end like this."_

Kate would think it was merely a whisper of the mind...

That is, if she did not see her mother's face.

* * *

**Part of this is a story about the darkness of death, and ultimately, accepting the inevitable pain and fear that death carries. I assure you, however, that it will be worth sticking around for. It will not disappoint. Healing is the most beautiful, but simple miracle. You need to give it time.**

**Thoughts? Constructive feedback? (P.S. My gratitude to the lovely ****anonymous reviewer.) Nothing is more frustrating than no feedback, my friends. **


	8. The Things We Buried

_And now, the climax…_

* * *

_Chapter Eight: The Things We Buried _

* * *

Kate Beckett felt herself whip in and out of a violent consciousness.

Through it, she could hear voices, thick and heavy around her. She also heard shouting, screaming. She felt a thrashing of her body against something that felt a lot like metal. Then she felt relief from the beating, if only for a moment, and then she heard a desperate whisper:

"_Hang on, hang on…God, please just hang on…"_

It was Castle.

When reality slips further, her mind comes to a halt, fizzing and humming emptily like a broken television screen. In a vast pool of white, her mother sits on a black chair, her dark and emptied eyes fixed on her daughter. She is dressed entirely in black.

With trepidation, Kate feels that reality no longer exists, and she reaches out a hand in her mother's direction, into the light.

"_Mom is that you?"_ she whispers.

Her mother rises from the black chair, slowly striding across the canvass of white surrounding them. She merely looks at her daughter, taking in how she has grown in her absence, wonderment burning in her eyes just like how Kate remembered them. When Kate asks in a trembling voice again if she is her mother, she closes the distance between them and wordlessly embraces her.

Joanna breaks from her daughter first. She closes her eyes. She kisses her daughter on the forehead. Kate shivers as she feels the warmth of her lips course over her head.

"_Am I dead?"_ Kate's eyes dart around to see the pure white around her, feeling so emptied, distressed.

Her mother does not reply, but maintains a focus on her daughter's eyes. She walks back to her small black chair in the further expanse of white.

"_That is up to you, Katherine_," she says.

Then the entire image disappears and she is sprawled on the snow-covered concrete drive outside of the safe house. A gun barrel was plastered deeply into her pallid forehead.

[][][]

Martha's stare was empty as it caught Alexis'. They were both up watching a movie, neither one them paying attention to it. "I feel like…"

Martha's words fell, but then rose again with a pained rasp. "…I am drowning…"

Alexis held her trembling hand, not able to utter a word.

[][][]

Kate Beckett's body, already weakened from the past stabbings, faltered as she was knocked lifelessly onto the concrete outside the safe house, again as she tried to rise. Castle tried to throw Vera Harrison to the ground, but she held a gun over the detective and he froze.

"This is not one of your books, Mr. Castle," she said, blue eyes catching in the lamplight, her heavy breath quickening with the pace of his heart. "I decide how this ends."

"_Don't…touch him…"_ Kate murmured, but her concussed mind could produce no more words.

"I'm not here for my father, or you," Vera told the author, gun still aligned to tear into the detective's heart. "I am here for me, I need to do this. Blood for blood. Life for life."

"_Please_—"

"Remember Coonan?" she asked.

A flood of memories came to the author's mind as he remembered Kate, who was now the one lifeless on the floor, administering CPR Coonan. He also pieced it together that he was a hit man for Vera's father. The memory and her frozen face on the concrete made his heart come to what felt like a sickened stop.

"Now," Vera Harrison said. "She killed my lover. Watch me kill yours."

[][][]

Lanie had called Kate Beckett, again, and again, getting the same emptied deadpan. After the third time, she got up from her bed, her feet nervously padding to her closet. Esposito immediately noticed her absence beside him in the bed, and put on his clothes, finding Lanie hastily pulling on some sweats.

Her eyes were red from no sleep, her outfit, he noticed, was uncharacteristically mismatched.

"She's not answering." Lanie said, shuffling to get on some boots. Her breath was uneven. "Kate has not replied in hours."

"Who's to say she's not caught up in the writer?" Esposito smiled, placing an arm around her waist, trying to offer a simple reassurance, but no flicker of relief came to the medical examiner's face.

"She'd have answered by now."

He turned to Lanie, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Ryan and I will get a team out to check, but I think they're doing just fine at the safe house."

"I'm going with you," she said, moving forward to kiss him.

"No," he said.

"Yes," she pressed, kissing him again. "Now, let's go."

Even her lips tasted limp and sad, Esposito thought.

[][][]

"Kill me," Castle pleaded as last resort as Vera pulled a glinting knife from her pocket. "She tried to save Coonan. She gave him CPR after he was shot…do not kill her. _Please,_ I beg you—"

Vera ignored the author. "Pick her up."

With the gun now lowered to his head, Castle slowly bent to the ground and picked up Kate's concussed body. He clasped her in his arms and planted a slow kiss to her forehead. _"Hang on,"_ he whispered. _"Hang on. It can't end this way."_

"Now, walk to the car," Vera said with gritted teeth, gun still pressing against the back of his head. When Castle tried to run, she let out a shot in the night that barely hit his head. With despair in his eyes, he turned to look at Vera Harrison.

He was running out of options.

Every wrong move he made, the further he was allowing them to be taken over, he knew it decreased the chances of them getting out of this alive. He knew this, but there was nothing he could do.

Vera's gun still remained plastered to the back of the author's gooseflesh covered neck.

He entered the car.

[][][]

Roy's surroundings faded away, for a moment, with another swallow of whiskey. It burned in the base of his throat now, which started up more coughing. One of his members on the force came into his office and beckoned him to join the second set of search groups for Kate's father.

"Are you ready, sir?" the cop asked, making his eyes avert from the Captain's flask.

"Of course," he said, putting his liquor flask back into his pocket hastily.

Roy Montgomery would look back from this and know he was the furthest thing from ready to see what was about to come.

[][][]

Mr. Harrison held Jim Beckett in bound ropes to his hands, and led him into the cemetery on the edge of the city where his wife lay, six feet under in the ground. Jim Beckett closed his eyes, not even trying to imagine what was waiting for him in the hit man's plans.

Jim merely walked in the direction which he was pushed, his empty eyes finally tracing the gravestone he knew all too well. It was engraved in stone. Moreover, it was engraved in the convolutions of his mind, his heart:

_JOANNA BECKETT_

_Beloved wife, mother, and friend._

Even now, as his body ached in anguish, he knew so few words could never encompass what she meant to him.

She was his lover. She was his hope. She was his life.

She was _everything_.

[][][]

"We're almost there," Vera had said, but Castle could not reply.

As soon as he was forced into the SUV, a black van pulled up with some of Mr. Harrison's men. They bound him roughly into the seat, tying a cloth tightly over his mouth, so now he could not speak. He could feel Kate to begin to stir out of her concussion. She was still bound tightly against him. Their backs were plastered together. In desperation, they fought against their bondage until it hurt too much, and he caught her hand in his.

The gates of the cemetery, beyond which Kate's mother rest, there were countless graves blanketed in the light of the early morning and snow. The large, black cast-iron gates had been opened at the beginning flickers of daylight. The van passed through them.

Kate closed her eyes when the car stopped on the cemetery path to her mother's grave. She opened her eyes and her heart nearly stopped.

She could see her father shivering violently on the ground by her mother's grave. She could also see a man standing over her father with a gun to his head.

It was Miss Harrison's father. It was her mother's killer.

Kate screamed against the bondage on her mouth, no words spilling out. Just the sound of anguish, deep and mournful. At the sound, Castle used force to try and untie them, but it only caused searing pain in both of their wrists, and it became so painful he had to stop.

Castle and Beckett watched Vera clamber out of the car, her gun loaded, her face a void.

[][][]

"When I watched your wife walk though that alleyway three days before I killed her there," Mr. Harrison told Jim Beckett, pressing the barrel of the gun deeper into his forehead, "I knew she was onto me. She knew what I was hiding with my time on the force, she wasn't afraid to expose it. What a beautiful woman she was, though. Do you know I almost wanted to kiss her before I killed her? Strange feeling… She wasn't easy to—"

"_Shut up!"_ Jim spat, but Mr. Harrison stuck him on the side of the head. Jim's weakened body fell beside Joanna's gravestone. He peered at her name on it before he collapsed on the ground.

"You are one testy bastard, aren't you?" Mr. Harrison's teeth were clenched. "And to think you let your daughter into that world that collides with mine, thinking she will find that greater truth she has told you about. Well, let me tell you something: There is no truth in this life, no gain from suffering, no light. Just life. And it does not matter when it ends. We are all the same wretched dust in the end."

"Not her, or my wife," Jim whispered, his blue eyes staring emptily at his wife's killer. "They know love… they have found the meaning to everything."

Mr. Harrison clicked the safety off his gun. "That's what you think. Watch me prove you differently." He pointed to Vera Harrison's car, and Vera coming up the hill. "Your daughter is in there. And after we kill you, we will escort her to the precinct, where she will remove Joanna's files. And with that case, your daughter will be destroyed once and for all. Dust, and unto dust into dust we shall return."

[][][]

Roy Montgomery noticed from their search car that the cemetery was covered in a mass of black SUVs, thickly concentrated in a darkened swarm.

"There is no body exhuming for the NYPD issued for this date, correct?" Roy asked the driver, he nodded no, and when he saw the cars in the cemetery, he turned to the Captain.

"What the hell is going on?"

"We're about to find out," Roy said, pulling the steering wheel from the passenger seat and making a sharp turn towards the cemetery.

[][][]

Jim Beckett rose from the ground, hands still bound, and his body still trembling. He watched as Vera Harrison came to the top of the hill to confront them.

"We're not killing them," Vera said, moving her father out of the way. "We are going to get those files to destroy them and then we are leaving. There will be no evidence left to find us guilty. If we kill them, there will be."

Mr. Harrison merely placed the barrel of his gun to Jim's head.

"They know too much, there is no going back on this. The files and their lives are going to go."

Vera shook her head, "We have enough time to destroy the files. If we kill them, they have something to find us for—"

Mr. Harrison clenched a fist and raised a pointer finger to Vera's face, shouting, "They will find us anyway if they live, _dammit! _Our LIVES will be in hiding!"

"_LIVES?_" She pushed him."I haven't lived since the moment you put that gun in my hand and told me, '_Vera, if you don't do this, we are both going to die'_ and I was so young, so scared of death, so confused that I believed you when you said, '_It doesn't matter. Their death is instant.'_ We all meet death. But I have been dead for years."

"Very well then," Mr. Harrison said, now hearing the sound of police sirens in the distance. "You made your choice. I have made mine. Will you not get out of the goddamned way of him?"

Vera said nothing. She stood in front of Jim Beckett.

"Fine then," Mr. Harrison breathed.

He shot his daughter.

[][][]

Unaware of the outside, Castle and Kate kept struggling against their bonds in the car, until they began to give way. Both Castle and Beckett then turned to face each other, quickly ripping off their mouth ties and the ropes that entangled the other. She clasped his hand for the briefest moment, before she pulled him with her out of the car.

"You stay behind the car."

Her eyes were filled with the purest fear he had ever seen. He pulled on her shoulders desperately, begging her to stay. She put her fingers over his lips, and peered along the side of the car, only to find the most horrific scene before her. Castle's eyes pleaded for her to say what it was she saw, but she offered nothing to his request.

Then they heard Mr. Harrison screaming.

The sound forced Castle to remove Kate's hand, making her face him.

"You go in there, you know you aren't armed. They are. The chances of you—"

"Castle, I need you to promise me something," she interrupted, burning eyes catching his. "You will not follow me…no matter what happens….no matter what you hear or see…"

"Kate, I—"

"I have to do this. I could not live with an end like this, knowing there was something, something I could have done."

"But I—"

His words, whatever last plea he had, were consumed when she locked her mouth with his. It was the most mournful thing in his life, that realization that this might be the last time he would kiss her, hold her, they would get lost in each other.

Their kiss was consuming.

When Kate pulled abruptly away, she refused to look back. There would be no looking back, she told herself, because she would see him after this. They would be in each other's arms tonight, lulling into sleep, however restless it may be.

She walked along the opposite side of the car. In the distance, Mr. Harrison stood over his daughter's body screaming. Jim Beckett, crawling, reached out for Mr. Harrison's gun in his holster.

[][][]

"_Damn it!_ They've got men positioned at every entrance of the cemetery. There is no way in hell we are going to get enough men in here fast enough," Esposito told the captain over the dashboard transmission, one hand tightening on the steering wheel of his car the other tightening on Lanie's as they came to the cemetery's main drive. "We would need five times the men we have right now to get past all of those hit men. There is _no way_ this is going to happen."

The captain listened to the hum of the transmission and then spoke, "We don't have time. It's running thin…violently thin."

[][][]

Kate Beckett watched as Mr. Harrison left his daughter's body, and with a cold glance to his side, he saw Jim reaching for his gun. The killer turned the gun on him now, from where Jim finally found the strength to get off the ground. Kate cringed as she watched her father tossed to the ground again as she got closer to the grave.

And Castle followed…from a distance.

"It's me you want," Kate said, arms extended as she walked up to Mr. Harrison, her breath, what she figured would be her last breaths, heaved through her lungs, heavy. "I see Vera is no longer with us."

"_You shut the hell up_!" Mr. Harrison turned away from the detective though, looking at his daughter, frozen and lifeless on the ground. Then, he looked back at Kate, raising his gun to her head.

Kate heard her father screaming as she closed her eyes.

Kate took an unsteady step towards her mother's killer.

"_GET AWAY!"_ he shouted.

"I can't do that," the detective said, darkened eyes flickering. "I am all you want, aren't I? Let him go. He has nothing to do with this."

Mr. Harrison prepared to shoot her then and there, but he watched as the snow around him filled with the deepest shades of scarlet. Blood. He did not need to look at his daughter's corpse behind him to know what was happening. His world stopped in slow motion then because he pictured her when she was three years old, stumbling down a hill with red tulips for him. Red. Red. Red. Her blood was so _red_.

"_I love you, daddy,"_ she had told him.

Mr. Harrison let the tip of the gun barrel rest on Jim's forehead. Kate looked at him, he could tell she had a plan to disarm him, but he pushed Jim closer to the grave to get further away from the detective. He watched her for a split-second as she glanced behind her, hearing the crunch of snow.

Kate saw author feet beyond the scene with the purest look of sadness and fear etched in his face. His chest heaved as if he was facing a breaking point, his life was shattering silently, and he had no control of it.

Kate took a deepened breath, feeling her life come to a heightened rush around her. In that moment, her life in its entirety whispered to her. Her mother was there in her mind, helping her grubby five-year-old hands frost her birthday cake. Her father cheered as she began to peddle down the city block, her dad letting go of her two-wheeler bike. She saw her father embrace her as she graduated from police academy.

She saw the precinct. But most of all these images, she saw _him_.

Castle was smiling, he held her; he whispered he loved her.

And in this moment, the moment she felt the gun barrel cold as death against her forehead, her life was tragically incomplete, yet, it breathed something so indescribable…

"_Life was beautiful…"_ she thought, feeling the cold barrel of his gun press harder against her forehead. Kate's eyes slowly closed, shutting out the light.

She heard the author scream and tears spilled from her eyes.

She heard Castle running towards them on the hill.

But then the coldness ceased as she heard a shot that deafened her.

Still surrounded by darkness, eyes closed, Kate felt the tinge of a body heaped besides her being.

[][][]

"Let me go, too," Laine pleaded, turning to watch Esposito load his gun in the car.

"I can't." He pulled her into his arms. "You listen to me," he said softly, "I'll be back in here in a minute, and don't you dare think anything different."

She did not reply.

"Lanie, tell me everything will be okay."

She swallowed, her grief, her pain, all of her deepest fears to get out a few words.

"What will be," she said, pressing her lips to his briefly, "will be."

[][][]

Mr. Harrison was lifeless on the snowy ground.

Kate's eyes widened in horror when she realized Mr. Harrison took his own life. His body froze so quickly beside his daughter's. Still trembling, Kate began to help her father up, who was thrown to the ground in the madness. They said nothing to each other. Their eyes spoke fathoms deeper than they ever could. When Kate released her father of his bonds, he embraced her.

From the corner of her eyes, Kate tried to find Castle, but he was being held back by uniforms in the background, who were questioning him as to what occurred. He began to talk quickly to them, until finally bolting from the group of uniforms. But they followed him.

In silence they carted the deceased killers away.

[][][]

Finally free, Castle ran up the hill of snow, tears fighting in the corners of his eyes as he embraced Kate. He could feel her body almost fall into his, still weakened from the past stabbings, failing due to the rush and crash of adrenalin.

His lips clashed with hers and she responded quickly, pulling him in, deepening the kiss as he did.

Jim Beckett awkwardly tried to pace away from them.

"Um."

Castle and Kate turned to find Mr. Beckett glancing at them with wide eyes. Their faces turned a bright crimson when they came around to noticing.

"I uh—sorry about that," Castle offered.

"It would not be the first time I saw you two do that," he said quietly with a small smile on his face, walking away from the two, hands in his pockets.

Kate and Castle's faces both flushed an even deeper shade of red.

"When you picked us up for the safe house?" the author supplied.

"Bingo," Jim grinned.

[][][]

"What did I tell you?" Esposito said, after a couple minutes, clambering back into the car. "The remaining hit men were arrested, and according to the captain, Castle, Beckett, and her father are safe. But speaking of Castle and Beckett…Roy saw them…" Esposito whispered the rest even though they were sheltered away from everybody in his car.

It was one of those things you still don't believe when you saw it aloud.

"Nuh-uh?" Lanie gasped. "Make out in front of uniforms. No way…it's too good to be true."

"You better believe it," Esposito said, motioning his head to where Kate and Castle were holding hands quietly by the gravesite with Jim.

[][][]

Roy came to meet the author, detective, and her father all holding hands by Joanna's gravesite. Even the crunching of his boots against the crisp white snow did not startle them out of their haze. Finally, he realized the reason for their silence when he listened to Kate's account of the killers' deaths. She also made the point to say that Mr. Harrison was a cop whose main motive involved seeking the delay of his own justice.

"I am a goddamned liar, detective," Roy said, turning away from her.

Kate bit back accusation, "He was your friend, and you believed in that. But now you know differently."

Finally, when the uniforms were onto their next call with Roy, only Kate, Castle, and Jim remained at Joanna's grave. There was a thick silence as they all stared at the gravestone. Jim particularly focused his attention on the flowers, which he had heard were from Richard Castle.

Jim remembered the night he called his daughter and she talked about his gesture. He also noticed the sadness in her voice when she talked about him. Something was incredibly unsaid. Now he knew. They were in love, complicatedly, but still in love. He wished that even though there was a deepened darkness, they would see it through.

Jim finally turned to the author and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Joanna would have…" but Jim's words began to fall through, "…she would have loved to see you two…"

He would have said more, but his throat tightened.

Nothing came out, so he walked away.

* * *

**Note: **One last chapter to go after this. Any thoughts would mean the world to me. Was this a respectable climax? And, how do you feel about the Castle finale? Are you excited? Are you dreading the cliffhanger? Or, are you like me: addicted to stellar cliffhangers. Thanks for reading and reviews would be amazing.-_Stay Classy_-


	9. This Makes Us Human

_Note: Put the beginning of the chapters together. They form a poem. Nifty, huh? This is the last chapter and I am already feeling cathartic. Grab the tissues, get some chocolate, and sit down, my lovelies._

* * *

_Chapter Nine: This Makes Us Human_

* * *

**Spring**

Kate Beckett could still tell that after all of this time of living, sadness was like a shadow. It will be there, like a looming ghost of your past, no matter how hard you try to rid yourself of it.

We are as much of the darkness as we are of the light.

The problem many people face is learning to embrace both. After all, both the lightest and darkest of times come together to make us irrevocably human.

This darkness still followed everybody months after her mother's case was finally solved and the life of every person she loved was put at risk. However, there was a new birth within each of them: that light. She could tell they had transformed. Some showed it physically, yet most of the scars were hidden within themselves.

Kate sat on the edge of a spring cookout her father held by his condo, outside of the city. The wind began to pick up and she noticed thick, ashen clouds overhead. She slipped into the background of the gathering and merely watched these people she was so blessed to have in her life, because sometimes, the most beautiful thing to do at a gathering is to stop and take it in.

She noticed her father, who was often reclusive, coming out of the barrier he wove around himself ever since her mother died. She noticed the way he danced with Martha to a Frank Sinatra tune on his CD player resting on his patio, the way she made her father laugh, or the way their gazes lingered and they almost were transfixed with each other when the song came to a quieted end. The detective felt blissful, yet saddened.

What if it was her mom still dancing with her father, making his eyes fill with that inexpressible joy again?

She dismissed the thought, and she could see Lanie and Esposito holding hands and talking quietly to each other at the edge of the party. She could also see Alexis laughing with Ashley, who managed to accidently drain a whole dollop of dressing out of the bottle, drenching his salad.

"You have to watch when you are pouring that stuff," Alexis said, taking his salad and transferring some of the dressing to her own.

"I was too busy watching you," Ashley said, a slow smile coming to his face.

Alexis laughed and raised an eyebrow. "Want some crackers with all that verbal cheese?"

His reply was kissing her.

"Whoa, cootie alert!"

Castle slipped beside Kate where she sat at the edge of the party and wrapped an arm around her. She noticed his eyes. They traced the way his daughter fell into her boyfriend's arms as they kissed, so Kate turned the author's face to look at her instead.

"Let's give them privacy, okay?" she suggested, raising an eyebrow. She bit back a grin when the author raised an eyebrow too, and Kate found herself biting back a full smile, her teeth catching her lip.

"Well, detective," the author grinned, "They are kind of right in front of our view. Unless, you are suggesting that we go somewhere private as well, but you'd _never_ do that."

"Yes, don't be ridiculous."

But they did find a place to themselves, a distant tree at the end of the yard. Castle kissed her so fiercely it almost made her heart stop. She felt glad for the darkness so the other guests could not see the way she pulled him in, still irrevocably needing him as much as he needed her.

They kissed each other breathless.

[][][]

"Where did Castle and Kate run off to?" Lanie asked. "They were just talking to each other a moment ago on the bench."

Jim Beckett merely grinned, his head motioning to two distant figures under a tree, one offering a hand to help the other one up. They kissed ever so briefly before making their way towards the group.

The table, including Montgomery, Ryan and his fiancé, Lanie and Esposito, and Martha came to a quiet. Jim, however, ginned and raised an eyebrow.

"Pay up."

"That was _SO_ not PDA, Jim," Martha said, shaking her head. "They did not know we were watching."

But as Beckett and Castle came closer to the group, they were still holding hands. Castle then waved awkwardly to find the group's attention on the both of them.

"Proof," Jim whispered. "I said Public Display of Affection. We got PDA."

With a grumble, they all passed the gloating man his winnings under the table. His bet was not even _if_ Castle and Beckett were together; it was they would all know very soon. Everybody else made the unlucky guess they would keep it a secret.

Jim, however, knew differently. So did his wallet.

[][][]

To an observer, one who looks at something, it would appear nothing, no sadness, was lying in the undercurrent of the gathering. To the soul searcher, who looks _into _things, one would notice slight lines in the faces of the guests that came to Jim Beckett's almost-summer gathering. Smiles that would never reach the pure bliss they had done before.

But, that is acceptance.

It is moving on, with the sadness, yet the recognition of a future. People hold onto grief as if it is something worthy of value. Grief, however, should be something to mold you, teach you, but never to hold onto.

At least, as they watched the sunset fall and dip into a darkened sky, this was as far as they all had come.

[][][]

**The Next Morning**

Captain Montgomery wants to wash the memory of them almost dying under his watch out of his mind forever. But, he knows this will never happen.

With hesitancy, he presses the call button for the elevator and went into it, letting it descend to the floor of the shooting range. The Captain felt his heart reeling in his chest, feeling a lot like his heart attack he had at fifty, as the doors whizzed open. He stepped out and into the hallway by the range. He almost turned back.

_This_ is where they were shot.

_This_ is where their blood covered the ashen concrete floors.

_This_ was where their lives almost ended because he never thought to look into his ex-cop friend for Joanna's murder.

The Captain's head rushed and he felt sickened even though their blood had long ago been cleaned off of the floor, and both Castle and Beckett were okay. Even better than that, they were together. _"And about damned time, too," _he always thought.

Today was the first day since their stabbing he used the elevator instead of his resort to the stairs.

He remembered how even their blood stained the elevator carpets. The paramedics used them to take both the detective and the author to the main floor before whisking them away to the hospital.

When Montgomery almost left the range, he saw Beckett and Castle at the corner of the room. They were buried in each other's embrace until Castle whispered something about how he thought they would never survive the stabbings, and began to kiss the detective fiercely. Then she had him plastered against the wall.

They were so alive.

Yet, their eyes were still…haunted.

The Captain heaved a sigh as he left.

Hearts break. Hearts mend. And so is the world.

[][][]

**Night**

Kate did not tell Castle where she was taking him, only offering her hand as they walked to her car in the precinct lot.

She drove for a long time, watching the bustling city transform into suburbs and then into a rural landscape. During the whole car ride they both were silent, the day's events still playing back in their minds.

They made a major leap that day, the two of them.

It was the first time they both were able to go back into the shooting range. It had taken months, but they were finally at the beginning of grappling with the unthinkable realization that they were living on borrowed time, that life was not infinite.

So he kissed her. He kissed her with no hesitation, or fear. He knew she was his. He was hers. In that feverish moment he raised her shirt, kneeled, and kissed up her abdomen's stab wounds in the shooting range, he hoped they always would be one.

All humans feel a part of them is infinite. It is a part of our condition. We call this hope.

[][][]

Their first stop was a small pond out in rural New York, hidden in a thicket of woods.

Its waters were a deepened, royal blue. The sound of the water was tranquil; the drone of crickets was a distant hum. They both clambered out of the car and walked under the shelter of willow trees, watching the sun begin to set in the sky as they both sat on the grassy shore together.

"Wait for me," Kate said quietly, and she left him alone on the shore, watching her walk away.

[][][]

Kate found what she came here for in a deep thicket of trees on the outer edge of the pond. She took the rusted hand shovel that was resting at the base of a willow tree, and began to dig. She came across a buried plastic Tupperware container. On it were two words in a careful scrawl, her mother's writing:

_Let Go_

The box, when her mother had been alive, was a place where she could let go of the struggles of her job. She placed in it the things that were her demons in her life. For her it was an addiction to cigarettes. Having to assume her parents' role at an early age after their death, Joanna took up the habit, but finally had the resolve to stop.

As she said, _"Cigarettes were the only constant in my life at one time. Katie, that is what addictions are. We reach out for a constant, for a feeling of completeness, and lose sight of everything that defines completeness. But, we are all human…"_

When she died it had been ten years since her last cigarette.

Kate opened the box and then immediately turned away, overwhelmed with its contents, and the smell of cigarettes she still associates with her mother.

Her mother's cigarette butts were placed throughout, scattered like blackened tombstones at the bottom of the box. They were strewn among alcohol bottles that her dad had placed into the box years ago. Kate remembered the warm summer night she drove her father here, bringing him to the box that only she and her mother knew about.

Besides the night her mother died, that was the only time she saw her father cry.

The box held more than her parents' demons, it held her own.

Glinting black at her were painkiller bottles. All of the prescriptions were fading. All were glinting white bottles.

All were emptied.

After she was shot for the first time on the force, they kept her away from reality. They even kept her depression at bay…for awhile.

When you are not aware you are living, how can you be sad?

Silent tears streamed down her face as she mentally counted the pill bottles, ashamed. But then she remembered everything it took to get where she is. Everything she had to overcome to be standing, breathing, loving the life she almost gave up on.

She glanced down the shore of the pond and saw the writer still sitting by the shore.

Finally, she pulled out the two things she had to retrieve from the box.

It was a file folder and a letter.

Kate glanced at Castle's careful handwriting on the cream-colored letter, and felt that same swell of emotion when she first opened it months ago by her mother's grave. She remembered that when her mother's case was reopened, Castle made a tribute to her by her grave, and this was a part of it. She also recalled the swell of emotion she felt that prevented her from finishing the letter.

The night after she went to see him at The Old Haunt and he kissed her for the first time, she ended up driving to this very place. She threw the letter in the box of demons not wanting to deal with it.

Now, she regretted it immensely.

So Kate sat, and she read the letter. The first part was still etched in her memory.

_To Mrs. Joanna Beckett,_

_For somebody I have never had the pleasure to meet on this earth, your life, your story, and your legacy has impacted me in more ways than you can ever know. I was shocked to realize, within myself, that that my conception of love is completely wrong. The love that you held for the people in your life is something much more than any love I have ever known. It lasts beyond the grave. _

_Your memory breathes on. You live on because your love lives on. _

_It is one of those things that will never be destroyed. No hand of a murderer can ever take this away, it cannot be silenced through the taking of a life; hate will never win in the end. Love, I learned, is something that can and should last; forever. Through everything that fails, it is the one thing that shall always remain. When people die, walls crumble, memories fade and we die, I want my love to live on as well._

_How do I know your love lives on?_

_It's simple. I know your daughter…_

She read on to the part that she had never seen:

…_and I love her. _

_When I look at her, I get a glimpse of you. I imagine your courage is reflected in her own, her undying search for justice was like yours. I imagine she has learned that eye roll (you know the one) from you as well._

_When I imagine these things though, it is hard to fathom what your absence from her life was like. I cannot even think about the pain that comes with going to your childhood home, knocking on the door, and expecting you to be beyond it, when only emptiness lies beyond. I cannot imagine walking past a park to school and remembering a time when things were so simple, so free. _

_I just can't._

_But she has made me understand._

_She has made me realize that sometimes the meaning of life is to merely live; taking every day for what it is worth, reveling in life through its darkness and beauty. Along with my daughter and mother, she is a glimpse of what it means to be human, and to finally love the life you live._

_And that, for me, has meant everything._

_My love always,_

_Richard Castle_

She should have known it then.

He loved her.

With trembling hands she closed the box, taking Castle's letter and a case folder with her. In her hand she grasped the document that declared her mother's case unsolved all of those years ago, but left the rest of the folder back in the box.

She put it back into the blackened earth and buried it.

[][][]

Castle could not keep his eyes off of her while trying to drive home down the soft bends of the rural road.

It was almost unreal…that moment. Sometimes, we all need proof that when we are fully immersed in something beautiful, after all of the pain and heartache, that these moments still exist.

The author took in a deepened breath knowing they did.

He watched as the sun began to dance with its last embers in the sky. The clouds came together in a blackened swirl to steal the deepest of sunset hues and replace them with stars. Castle turned to Kate and silently watched the way the wind rippled through her hair, how her eyes still whispered sadness, yet the promise of hope in the darkness.

She turned to the author, seeing his features form a small smile in the last flickers of sunlight. Music lulled into the background as her head fell onto his shoulders. He slowly moved to face her and her eyes caught his for the briefest moment.

What he saw within them was indescribable. If you have really been in love before, and felt that swell of almost every emotion in life all at once, then you know exactly what he saw.

She turned up the CD with her mother's favorite songs and let her hand flow out of the open window and through the night sky that was now a deep, darkened blue. She caught the author staring at her, transfixed between trying to drive along the abandoned rural road and watch her. Her hand touched his shoulder and then fell to his heart.

She closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling of his heartbeat against her palm.

Finally her mother's favorite song, the last track on the CD, came pouring through the speakers. It was a piano song by _The Smiths_.

_Sing me to sleep  
Sing me to sleep  
And then leave me alone  
Don't try to wake me in the morning  
'Cause I will be gone  
Don't feel bad for me  
I want you to know  
Deep in the cell of my heart  
I will feel so glad to go_

"Are you ready?" she whispered.

He nodded.

Her hand clenched the torn shreds of the document that declared her mother's case unsolved all of those years ago. They had torn it together back by the pond. He came behind her, holding her hands, helping her tear them.

Now Kate exhaled deeply and watched as the torn shreds took flight and fluttered out of the car window and into the night, never to be seen again as they were claimed by the darkness.

"It's gone, now," he whispered back.

Then there was silence…silence…silence…

He reached out…feeling her heartbeat under his fingertips.

This feeling, the most human of all things, was the only thing he had ever needed.

In that moment, two human hearts were infinite.

[][][]

* * *

I cannot begin to describe the emotion that comes with ending this chapter, and this story as a whole. If you want to know how I feel, listen to the song, "Asleep" by _The Smiths_ that was featured in the ending of this chapter. I love sharing music, so enjoy.

I also want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for remaining with this tale and on this journey. Any words at all would mean the world to me as we come to this final end. You keep reading, I keep writing. –I hope the journey was meaningful—Bubye.


End file.
